Tag Archives: Colonialism
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh
Allow me to start with two immediate thoughts about content and delivery. Content: Today’s Mexican narcos, the Colombian cartels, the Afghan/Pakistani smuggling rings utterly pale in comparison to the British and American opium runners demanding access to 19th-century China. You might have studied the distant Opium Wars via textbook facts and figures, but you probably didn’t have the sort of visceral, being-there experience as Amitav Ghosh provides here.
Delivery: Read, do not bother listening to either of the two Ibis Trilogy titles (hope springs eternal for #3). Phil Gigante who voices Sea of Poppies gives the strangest accents to the characters, including an inexcusable ‘ching-chong’ for Baboo Nob Kissin. Thankfully, the man gets to speak fluently as narrated by Sanjiv Jhaveri in River of Smoke. BUT Jhaveri’s recitation of Robert Chinnery, the illegitimate mixed-race son of George Chinnery (the English painter, a historical figure, although Robert is seemingly Ghosh’s creation), is SOOOO riddled WITH (!!!) non-existent OVERpunctuaTION and flamBOYant OVERemphasis in his cadence as to make the young man sound like a grating stereotype on some failing teen drama. So really, get the books only and let your own voice give breath to Ghosh’s brilliant characters, unaided!
River begins “in a far corner of Mauritius,” where a now-elderly Deeti resides over her sprawling clan, telling stories from her adventurous life. Backtrack to 1938, when Sea of Poppies ended with a daring five-man escape from the Ibis. Of the Sea cast, Ah Fatt reunites briefly with his father, Bahram Modi, the shrewd merchant son-in-law of a powerful Bombay Parsi family; Ah Fatt manages to get the former Raja Neel Rattan Halder hired as Modi’s munshi (writing secretary) aboard his ship Anahita headed to Canton. Meanwhile, on Mauritius, Paulette finds both an employer and mentor in botanist Fitcher Penrose who was an admirer of her late father. She joins Penrose on his ship Redruth as he sets course for China to collect rare plant specimens.
Convergence happens in Canton’s foreign quarter, Fanqui-town, a lively cosmopolitan enclave (although no foreign women allowed). River‘s narrative follows Bahram Modi’s journey with a loaded cargo that should be enough to buy his freedom from his greedy in-laws, and the lively experiences of Paulette’s childhood friend Robert Chinnery who is sent to Fanqui-town in Penrose’s employ to track down the mythical “Golden Camellia.” The foreign traders are most anxious about their overstocked opium, awaiting permission to unload. What’s illegal in their own countries demands to be dumped in China in the name of free trade … but the Chinese government has had enough and are finally ready to reclaim their addicted country. Let the war begin … literally.
Ghosh combines history and fiction here with seamless grace as he meticulously weaves actual documents, people, and events with his own unforgettable characters. The result is entertaining and astonishing … and will surely leave you impatient for more. Yes, book 3 is coming … although it can’t here soon enough for some!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Chinese, Indian, South Asian
Nervous Conditions by by Tsitsi Dangarembga
The first sentence of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s semi-autobiographical novel sets a haunting tone: “I was not sorry when my brother died.” With his death, 13-year-old Tambu is presented with a profound opportunity: even though she’s a girl, as the now-eldest child in her poor village family in 1960s colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), she is promised an education and – for better or for worse – her life will be forever changed. By the end of just the first paragraph, Tambu reveals what happens to the women most important in her life: “… my story is not at all about death, but about my escape and Lucia’s; about my mother’s and Maiguru’s entrapment; and about Nyasha’s rebellion …” In simple, powerful prose, Tambu recounts the path of her education – her “escape” – and the lives of the others she leaves behind.
Tambu’s uncle who is the family patriarch, his wife and their two children, have recently returned from England where they have experienced a lifestyle virtually unimaginable by their rural relatives. Her uncle and his family now reside in great comfort in the town mission – a colonial enclave – where he serves as the school headmaster. Tambu joins the privileged household in her late brother’s place, and grows especially close to her cousin Nyasha whose exposure to the West is reflected in her behavior towards her parents, both fascinating and shocking to the more traditional Tambu.
While Nyasha’s relationship with her parents disintegrates, and the friction between her aunt and uncle escalates, Tambu quietly, eagerly revels in her education. She finds returning to the remote family homestead with her philandering father and long-suffering mother especially challenging. In spite of her uncle’s initial objections, Tambu eventually applies for and is accepted into a prestigious boarding school run by nuns, and distances herself further from her family.
The story with its deceptively simple narrative is a devastating record of the cost of education in the midst of highly-charged struggles of race, class, and gender. Tambu’s “escape” comes at the cost of her family, of all that is familiar, and still she remains an outsider, never quite an equal in her European-dominated colonial world. Meanwhile, knowledge and experience cannot save her cousin Nyasha, or her aunt Maiguru, who are unable to resolve their western ‘freedom’ with their return to the restrictive traditions of their homeland. The road to education proves to be an unpredictable journey, both blessed and damning, enlightening and ensnaring, literally a matter of life and death.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 1988, 1989 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, African
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Get to know these characters well – they will surely prove to be worth every page of their three-book investment: Deeti, the young wife of a detached opium addict whose startling grey eyes see well beyond her vision; Zachary Reid, a mixed-race freedman from Baltimore whose ‘passing’ appearance helps him rapidly master life on the high seas; Serang Ali, an experienced seaman with a mysterious past, inexplicably determined to help Reid succeed; Paulette Lambert, the orphaned child of a peripatetic French botanist, and Azad Naskar – known always as Jodu – a servant’s son who grows up by Paulette’s side as her brother; Baboo Nob Kissin, whose spiritual obsessions will lead him to unexpected destinations; Kalua, a gentle giant of a young man, unjustly abused by the more powerful around him; and Raja Neel Rattan Halder, a pampered patriarch of one of the most notable families of Bengal, whose fortunes are about to crumble [his painstakingly detailed "Chrestomathy" at book's end is also quite the literary bonus].
Master storyteller Amitav Ghosh introduces each member of this epic cast in the first volume of his Ibis Trilogy as if choosing the most fascinating fibers for the most intricate tapestry. Each of these seemingly disparate strands will somehow commingle and converge on the deck of the former slave ship Ibis on its 1838 voyage from India to Mauritius, while legendary Canton looms beyond the black waters on the eve of the First Opium War. The tumultuous journey proves to be a microcosmic mix of caste, race, status, and power.
Final confession: I don’t do well with series. Especially the good ones, because waiting for the next book is achingly difficult for my restless brain. Having read numerous previous titles by Ghosh, I well suspected Ibis would be of not-to-be-missed caliber. So in order to circumvent my usual impatience, I decided I would wait (HA!) for all three titles to be out before commencing. I only got 2/3 through the actual waiting … and now that I’m deep into River of Smoke (Ibis, part 2), I am soooo dreading the delay until I can get my eyeballs on the concluding installment …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2008 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Indian, South Asian
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Truth: if not for Sunil Malhotra, I would never have finished Abraham Verghese‘s bestselling first novel, Cutting for Stone. Immediately opened upon receipt more than two years ago, for some reason, my bookmark never moved beyond the first few chapters …
Timing mattered: I realize now to fully appreciate Stone, I first had to read Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (for Ethiopian political context), The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (for medical background), and Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (for an overview of women’s societal maladies). Then Sunil Malhotra’s mellifluous narration embodied the characters (after which, with his many talented voices still in my head, I returned to the page because my eyeballs are quicker than my ears).
The final result is, in a word, wondrous.
On September 20, 1954, conjoined twin sons – ”tethered together” at the head by a “short, fleshy tube” – violently enter the world in Missing Hospital’s Operating Theater 3 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Born to an Indian nun who dies, and a British surgeon who vanishes in shocked stupor, they are named Marion (for the pioneering American gynecologist) and Shiva (who was “all but dead until [his adoptive mother-doctor] invoked Lord Shiva’s name”).
Now at 50, Marion Praise Stone examines his life: the twins’ Ethiopian childhood intertwined with their nanny’s daughter Genet, their cleaving when Marion is forced to flee their homeland, his training in a New York inner-city “Ellis Island hospital” (far removed from a more genteel “Mayflower hospital”), the shattering events that lead to reunion, and his ultimate trip back home. His telling repays a debt: “What I owe Shiva most is this: to tell the story. It is one … which I had to piece together. Only the telling can heal the rift that separates my brother and me. … Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed. To begin at the beginning …”
And thus the prologue ends and the epic begins. Over the next 500-plus pages (or 24 hours if you let Sunil woo you to the end), ShivaMarion will vividly inhabit your imagination; Verghese makes sure their residence is long-lasting, using his formidable literary skills to both unravel and bind the twins’ story amidst the chaos of immigration, colonialism, missionary life, political occupation, and so much more. More remarkable, however, are the small reminder seeds Verghese plants chapter after chapter, scenes so unforgettable that the tiniest triggers will cause you to envision ShivaMarion once more long after the final page: a hurt thumb, Middlemarch, helpless puppies, stalled motorcycles, even The New York Times.
Wait no more. Be ready. Be haunted. Be enthralled.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, African, Indian African, Indian American, South Asian American
Lost & Found by Shaun Tan
The literati around the world have surely got the memo that 2011 is Shaun Tan‘s year. Every few weeks, he seems to be back in the news with new accolades (all well-deserved, I must add … yes, I got the memo of his genius, too!).
Not too many weeks ago, Australia-based Tan won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for The Lost Thing (available on iTunes for you techno-savvy), which he co-directed, based on his own story of the same name. Then came the very recent news that Tan won the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award; the coveted literature prize (known as “The World’s Largest Children’s Literature Award”) also comes with five million Swedish krona, something along the lines of $801,000!! WOW!
Lucky for us, we can delight in his latest title as our reward for being loyal groupies: Lost & Found is actually THREE books in one. The Red Tree shows how unexpected surprises can turn despair into hopeful joy; The Lost Thing captures a magical encounter that teaches the proper care and feeding of lost things; and The Rabbits somberly questions the irreversible consequences of colonialism.
Tan’s minutely detailed, whimsically playful, utterly unique art is again something to behold. As in his previous sensational titles, The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia, Tan’s boundless imagination creates beckoning new worlds, just familiar enough to curiously venture in, yet so incomparably surreal and invitingly extraordinary to want to visit again and again. His versatile stories are multi-layered morality tales for all ages, gently suggestive and deeply lingering.
Explore his latest: three strokes of genius in one volume. Talk about rich rewards!
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
The Lives of Rain by Nathalie Handal, foreword by Carolyn Forché
I am the first to admit I missed having the poetry function installed when my limited brain got assembled. So when I DO actually GET poetry, I feel a true sense of gratitude to the writer, not to mention a few outbursts of gleeful accomplishment.
Nathalie Handal‘s three-part collection is a peripatetic wonder. She opens with “The Doors of Exile” – ” … stuck between two doors / waiting to leave to enter …” and takes the reader on a diasporic journey through language (Arabic, French, Spanish, in addition to English) by creating both an intimacy of the wanderer’s instant recognition of another traveler, and the displacement of a being other in an unfamiliar landscape both literal and imagined.
In Part I, Handal traverses the Middle East, giving voice to uprooted soul still searching in a lost and missing homeland. In Part II, she touches what seems to be a little piece of everywhere, from Marrakech to Paris to the Dalmatian Coast to Nueva York and briefly settles in Latin America where she visits relatives in “a little ciudad in México,” where the polylingual multicultural ask, “Habibti, que tal?”
Part III is a single, long piece which announces Handal’s journey’s end in the eight-part odyssey of “Amrika.” To mar Handal’s words with paraphrasing would be a literary crime … her finale clearly cannot, should not, will not to be distorted. Here, for now … Handal’s worldly peregrinations coalesce and settle:
” …I wear my jeans, tennis shoes,
walk Broadway, pass Columbia,
read Said and Twain,
wonder why we are obsessed with difference,
our need to change the other?
I wait for the noise to stop
but it never does
so I go to the tip of the Hudson River
recide a verse by Ibn Arabi
and between subway rides,
to that place I now call home,
listen to Abdel Halim and Nina Simone
hunt for the small things
I have lost inside of myself –
and at the corner of Bleeker and Mercer
through a window of faded Arabic letters
see a New York debke …
It is later than it was while ago
and I haven’t moved a bit,
my voice still breaking into tiny pieces
when I introduce myself to someone new
and imagine I have found my way home.”
Readers: Adult
Published: 2005 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Poetry, Palestinian American
Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border by Luis Alberto Urrea, photographs by John Lueders-Booth
Thanks to a sudden snowstorm and ensuing power outage, I had every excuse to strap on my headband flashlight and read the first of Luis Alberto Urrea‘s Border Trilogy without pause. Given the sheer gawk-factor of these pages, any excuses were negligible: This is definitely a riveting, shocking must-read. Realizing that the book was published almost two decades old (!) and not nearly enough has changed is the biggest jaw-dropping, head-shaking, gawk-inducer of all.
Born in Tijuana just south of the California/Mexico border – Urrea is hapa: Mexican on his father’s side and U.S.-American on his mother’s side – Urrea never really left, even when living elsewhere. Check his blog: his entry for December 8th, 2010 has him back in Tijuana, reliving an experience almost straight out of Across the Wire. “Tijuana is Mexico’s cast-off child,” Urrea writes of his birthplace, where the tragedies, brutal crimes, murders, addictions, and the unimaginably difficult everyday lives in this collection take place.
In 1978, Urrea met “a remarkable preacher known as Pastor Von,” a 30-year-veteran of “slogging through the Borderlands mud”; this book is simply dedicated “For Von.” Into the bottomless depths of Tijuana’s poverty, Urrea followed Von to the garbage dumps and shanty villages, bearing food, water, medicine, building materials, and sometimes just a willingness to listen.
In the dumps, the Cheese Lady drags him to meet a newly arrived woman named Jesus and her large family, whose 13-year-old daughter must hide in the family shack as howling men circle trying to “break though the doors and walls to get to her.” He meets Pacha, a young mother of too many who loses another child, and Mrs. Serrano, a woman literally desiccated from lack of food and water, who miraculously delivers a healthy baby.
He meets and loses Negra, a little girl who will haunt him for years. He recalls the reed-thin, glue-sniffing addicts, a fire-blinded kitten whose gratitude lasts through its final purr, the careless inhumanity of a Tijuana policeman who insists he’s “‘a cop, not a monster,’” and his father’s own mysterious and violent death. He is remarkable in his ability to be unflinching at the horrors he witnesses, and yet never so distanced as to ever not be achingly, powerfully humane.
With the latest round of whose-side-of-the-border-are-you-on-headlines, sharing Urrea’s memories couldn’t be more timely. Beyond the “ambassadors of poverty” – as Urrea refers to scourges like lice and scabies, neverending diseases from diarrhea to chronic hernia, even madness and “‘demon possession’” – Urrea captures life just 20 minutes from and yet clearly a whole world away from San Diego. He repeatedly reminds us that these are our neighbors, no matter how easy to ignore and forget, invisible from San Diego’s sparkling skyline, which for most of the bordertown’s survivors remains forever out of reach.
Readers: Adult
Published: 1993 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Hapa, Latino/a
Out of Iraq: Refugees’ Stories in Words, Paintings and Music by Sybella Wilkes, with a foreword by Angelina Jolie, in association with UNHCR
Alas, tragic headlines continue to repeat over and over: The front page of today’s New York Times reports, “Iraq’s Ills Lead Former Exiles to Flee Again.” [An online version of the article is available as "Iraq's Troubles Drive Out Many Refugees Who Came Back."]
Through a mosaic of history, politics, statistics, and true stories from Iraqi refugees, author and UNHCR (the office for the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees) Senior Communications Officer Sybella Wilkes provides a window into the everyday lives of the survivors – and thereby some of the worst victims – of the war on Iraq. Story by story, she shows the increasing consequences to the actual people who are desperately trying to rebuild their lives, often without success. The struggles that the children – the youngest, most tragic victims – must face are the most disturbing of all.
While the book’s intended audience is clearly younger readers – especially memorable throughout the book is the art of the Iraqi children – Wilkes does not shy away from the horrors of war, although she is restrained in any overly graphic descriptions of death and destruction. Many of the children here know nothing other than gunfire, bombings, and eternal fear. Chaos and worry have followed most families into exile, where too many have traded danger for poverty. Relative safety in refugee camps in other countries like next-door Syria also means unemployment as the host country does not allow the Iraqis to work legally. As the years pass, the concept of home remains a faraway dream.
In an effort to share the Iraqi refugees’ experiences beyond reading the book, Wilkes provides readers – and their parents and teachers – a page of suggestions on how to learn more and get personally involved. Knowledge is merely a beginning … action is necessary for actual change. From creating empathy by using “art, theatre and music … [to explore] how you and your family would feel about leaving your home and country,” to ways to raise funds for the UN Refugee Agency, to a young man’s testimony on how he is helping in Basra, Iraq, Wilkes gives solid examples of reaching out and doing more.
By teaching children now about empathy and active assistance, maybe those breaking headlines can change sooner than later. Out of Iraq makes for an enlightening start: for every sale of this title, UK publisher Evans Books will make a donation to UNHCR.
Readers: Children, Middle Grade
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, ..Middle Grade Readers, .Nonfiction, British, Iraqi
Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins
Inspired by three years of living in Thailand with her family and visiting refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border, Mitali Perkins’ latest novel follows the lives of two boys on opposite sides of a war they have inherited.
City-educated Chiko feels compelled to apply for a government teaching position in hopes of supporting his mother while the two wait for news of his doctor father who has been imprisoned for resisting the Burmese government. When he goes to city hall to apply, he’s abducted with other young boys and taken far into the mountains to be trained as a soldier. Chiko’s academic lifestyle has not prepared him for the physical challenges of fighting life, but he makes quick friends with homeless orphan boy Tai whose street smarts just might save them both …
Tu Reh takes over the story’s narration midway through, as he must decide the fate of the seriously injured Chiko. Tu Reh is a Karenni boy soldier, a member of one of the many ethnic tribes that challenge the rule of the corrupt Burmese government. Out for his first mission with his hero father, the group finds Chiko is the only survivor of a mine blast. Tu Reh’s father quickly bandages Chiko, then puts his fate into his son’s hands – take him to the nearby healer and save his life, or leave him to die.
Both Chiko and Tu Reh are mere boys, learning as best as they can amidst inhuman, unjust conditions not of their making. But somehow, someone has instilled them with morals and goodness strong enough to counter the fighting and hatred, regardless of the imminent threat to kill or be killed … indeed, while these children have inherited war, they’re the only hope of somehow, someday ending the violence.
Perkins adds a pertinent end chapter, “About Modern Burma,” which warns of the unfortunate situation of the majority of the Karenni people even now. In her “Author’s Note,” she wisely asks her readers the toughest questions, “What would you do if your mother was hungry and your only option to feed her was to fight in the army? What if you saw soldiers burning your home and farm while you ran for your life?” In spite of such tragic, horrifying experiences, both Chiko and Tu Reh manage to find their human spirit beyond vengeful reactions … others in Perkins’ story certainly do not. She gently but encouragingly offers resources to those who “want to promote peace and democracy in Burma or help refugees fleeing from that country” at www.bamboopeople.org.
Read Chiko’s and Tu Reh’s story. Learn how young Nya Meh learned to forgive the worst atrocities a young girl could ever face and chose instead to heal others. And how Chiko’s father never forgot the kindness of his childhood Karenni friend. And how grandfather implores the hot-headed others, “If we give way to hatred, we won’t be any better than our enemies.”
Join in. Let peace start today, one reader at a time …
To check out Mitali Perkins’ many other titles on BookDragon, click here.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, Burmese, Indian American
Migritude by Shailja Patel
Given the sheer number of books that arrive in the mailbox, I rarely pick up a title and start reading immediately. But something about Migritude (debuting from fabulous indie publisher Kaya Press: ‘Smokin’ Hot Books’!!) demanded ‘read me NOW!’ Once opened, I could hardly put it down.
Shailja Patel defies easy check-it boxes. She’s not quite African because even after multiple generations in Kenya where she was born and raised, ‘brown’ people can’t feel safe as they watch their Ugandan neighbors violently expelled during Idi Amin’s reign of terror. She’s not at all Indian as she’s never lived there in spite of Gujarati relatives. She’s definitely not British in spite of her UK college education. And she’s not quite American as real Americans are never made to wait a frightening four hours for parents to emerge through customs after they have been held without cause.
Her artist’s life, too, is not easily defined. She’s a poet, storyteller, performance artist, activist … and her first book reflects her hybrid, morphing creativity: ”A battered red suitcase holds my trousseau – 18 saris collected by my mother, to give to me when I married,” Patel begins. “Migritude is the mantra that unlocks the suitcase, releases the stories.” She’s a peripatetic migrant with attitude to spare … welcome to Patel’s unique Migritude.
Those once hidden stories debuted to live audiences in 2006 and became a globe-trotting performance that combines the price of colonial history, family chronicles, mother/daughter exchanges, personal journey, and voices of women from around the world who dared speak out. From the imperialist commodification of Kashmiri into cashmere, mosuleen into muslin, ambi into paisley, the rebirth of chai as “a beverage invented in California,” Patel breaks open violent, destructive history, both distant and far too near.
To her performance recorded in ink and paper comprising the book’s first quarter, Patel adds a companion “Shadow Book,” which she describes as “an extended debrief with an old friend: an accounting of behind-the-scenes and after-the-fact stories, memories, and associations … to illuminate Migritude by offering context.”
In the third section, Patel includes the “poems [that] are the soil in which Migritude germinated” – from “What We Keep” that gives voice to a fragile elderly aunt teaching her to make “good puris,” to “Eater of Death” in which a desperate Afghani mother mourns her husband and seven children murdered by American bombs.
In the final, shortest section, Patel includes an “idiosyncratic” chronology of political and personal history, and ends with two interviews because “[a] good interview, like a good poem, throws up surprises and discoveries for its participant as well as for its readers.”
Lucky readers are certainly in for ‘surprises and discoveries’ here. Close the book and your first reaction most likely will be ‘I WANT TO SEE!’ Stay tuned: her skeletal website as of this writing is still under construction, but surely a tour schedule will be included … see you at the theater!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
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