House of Stone...random thoughts

House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe by Christina Lamb.

What a wonderful book. Not a happy book. Easy to read, because it was very well-written. Difficult to read, because it hurt. It hurt in the way that so much of human history and human politics hurts to read about. House of Stone was written by Christina Lamb, a journalist who spent many years reporting on Zimbabwe, a woman who risked her life on many occasions because British journalists were banned from even entering the country. While I believe she was quite objective in her telling of this story, I also believe that she loves the people of this country.

The book tells the story of this southern African nation in a unique way. In alternating chapters, we hear the story of two Zimbabwean's lives. Aqui, a Shona who was born and grew up in a mud hut. Nigel, a privileged white who attended private school and spent carefree summers playing in the beautiful African landscape. We hear their stories as they grow from childhood into adulthood. Their personal stories through the times of brutal civil war, through the change from a white supremacist government to black majority rule, through the descent into tyranny by Robert Mugabe. And we eventually see their lives intersect.

I recently read a book titled Dictatorships: Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe by James R. Arnold and Roberta Wiener, so I had a background in the history and politics of this nation. But you don't need any prior knowledge, as Lamb's book brought a real richness to that background. The personal stories of Aqui and Nigel are put in the setting of fuller history of the nation.

Truly, I loved this book, and I highly recommend it. But be forewarned...your heart will break as read about Robert Mugabe's destruction of this beautiful African country. Your heart will break for the people of this country.

*****

Other opinions:

Eva of A Striped Armchair

If you've reviewed this book, feel free to leave a link in the comments and I'll add it here. Thanks.

In the Land of Invisible Women...random thoughts

In The Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom by Qanta A. Ahmed, MD.

I first heard of this book while listening to the Diane Rehm Show one day. Dr. Qanta Ahmed was Diane's guest, and her story fascinated me. She had completed her residency and further studies in medicine in New York. And though she had hoped remain in the U.S. after her training, she was unexpectedly denied renewal of her visa. Oh a whim, she accepts a position at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital in Saudi Arabia. Naively perhaps, she expects to feel at home there. She is after all a British-born Muslim doctor. But the world she lands in is unlike anything she's ever experienced. This book tells the story of her two years working in Saudi Arabia.

Let me say right off the top that I really loved this book. But I have to admit that I had problems with the writing. It was a bit too flowery for my tastes. Maybe flowery isn't the correct word, but each sentence seemed to contain eight adjectives and four adverbs all wrapped in a metaphor. Obviously that's an exaggeration, but I swear at first I just wanted to keep yelling, "Stop. You're trying too hard." That said, the book was never hard to understand in any way, and honestly I sort of found the writing more amusing than annoying.

So what did I love about this book? It transported me to a land that is so utterly different from anything I have ever experienced. I knew very little about Saudi Arabia before reading this book, and while I can't claim to truly understand the land now, I learned so much. A bit about the history, but much, much more about the culture. Or should I say cultures. For Saudi Arabia is a land of contradictions. And it was interesting to discover the Kingdom through the eyes of someone who was just discovering it firsthand for herself.

I would learn that Saudi Arabia was many things to many people: to the rich, a land of boundless wealth; to the poor, a prison of abject poverty; to the expatriate worker, a land of contrasts and inconsistencies, an ever moving labyrinth of contradiction, not wholly one nor wholly the other.

Abbayahs, Hajj, Mutawaeen. Dangerous, high-speed highways. Gender-segregation. Forbidden dating. Hymenoplasty. Arranged marriage. Polygamy. Divorce. Domestic violence and child abuse. And many, many strong women.

While in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Ahmed develops feelings for a colleague. And I have to admit, at first it seemed rather annoying the way she spoke about it. Here she was an extremely well-educated doctor, acting like a preteen girl in throes of a crush. But there truly was a point to her including all of this, as it showed the realities of a society where mixing of the sexes is prohibited, where dating isn't permitted at all. She didn't even realize how she was acting until she was attending a party for a friend who was about to enter an arranged marriage. The grown women at this party were all acting like schoolgirls.

They giggled coquettishly and girlishly. The atmosphere was at once innocent and deeply saddening. The women, starved for meaningful contact with the opposite sex, fell into two camps before marriage; panicked promiscuity on threat of dishonor or even worse, and adolescent, girlish fantasies that would never lead to a real relationship. I failed to see my own fantasy weaving in my daydreams about Imad. I was no more immune to the artificial climate of Riyadh myself, no matter how Westernized I thought myself to be.

Dr. Ahmed's time in the Kingdom was coming to an end at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She doesn't sugarcoat the reactions of some to horrendous events of that day. She is dazed and confused and dismayed and saddened beyond words. The chapter she devotes to this is a very difficult one to read, and yet had she not included it, the book would not have portrayed the whole of her experiences there.

Today, Dr. Ahmed is a quadrupled boarded physician practicing in South Carolina.

*****

Other viewpoints:

Sarah at Behold, The Thing That Reads A Lot

I'd love to include your two cents if you've read this book, so please feel free to leave me a link and I'll add it here. Thanks.

*****

I plan to give this book away eventually. Unfortunately I can't do it right now...I'm afraid I talked so much about it while I was reading it, that Rich now wants to read it. :) But I do have another book to give away, if anyone is interested. 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade by Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley, which I babble about here. (I think Annie and I have pretty much indoctrinated Rich on the whole Fair Trade issue, so he doesn't really need to read the book anymore.) It is a used book, of course. If interested, just say so and I'll draw a name in a few days (if there's more than one person interested, that is).

And speaking of giveaways, I actually remembered to draw the winners of That's Life: Finding Scrapbook Inspiration in the Everyday. Yep, I said winners, plural. It dawned on me after I wrote that post that I really don't need to keep either copy, so I drew two names instead. Wish I had a copy for everyone! Anyway, Trish and Bookworm are the winners. If you could just send your snail mail addresses to rdagmstevens at frontiernet dot net, I'll try to get the books in the mail sometime this coming week.

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea...random thoughts

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea by Valerie Zenatti.

Again with the short and sweet here.

I really, really wanted to like this book. Okay, that's a dumb thing to say, because of course, I want to like every book I read. But still, do you know what I mean? I hoped this book would be simply wonderful, because it involves such important issues.

Because of this, I have to admit when I first began reading, I was a bit disappointed. It started out feeling so cliche. Tal Levine, a 17-year-old Israeli girl, begins writing after a suicide bomber blows up a cafe in her neighborhood. A diary sorts. She feels nearly compelled to write. As she says:

When the fear comes back, like now, we all seem to forget who we are. We all become potential victims, bodies that could end up lifeless and covered in blood just because someone chose to blow themselves up right next to us. I want to know who I am, what I'm made of. What would make my death any different from any other? If I said that to my parents or friends, they'd be really shocked and would tell me gently that I needed to rest. That must be why I've decided to write: so I don't frighten the others with what's going on inside my head...and don't let them declare me a raving lunatic.

Tal decides to reach out in the only way she can think of...by putting a letter in a bottle and throwing it into the Gaza Sea. She imagines that a Palestinian girl her own age will find the letter, and that they'll begin this amazing friendship through e-mails.

But it's not a girl who finds her letter. Gazaman, as he calls himself, seems angry and bitter and sarcastic. See what I mean about stereotypes--the sweet, peace-loving Israeli girl and the angry, hate-filled Palestinian boy.

Gazaman also writes in a journal of sorts. But a journal he can't keep. He explains his reasons:

I get angry very quickly if I think too much, but I don't want to stop thinking. My head is the only place where no Tsahal soldier, no guy from Hamas, and not even my father or my mother can get in. My head is my home, my only home, a bit small for everything I've got to put inside it, and that's why I started writing, several years ago now. I didn't have to wait for that spoiled little Tal from Jerusalem to get me started. I write and then I burn the paper, tear it up, soak it, and throw it down the toilet; I'm too frightened someone will find it. But at least it does me some good, it soothes me a bit. There are too many people I hate, too may people stopping me from living my life, and too many signs (which aren't actually there but I can see all over the place) that say: EVERYTHING IS BANNED.

And it is through Tal's and Gazaman's "diaries" that we read part of the story. The other part is read through their e-mails. As this "conversation" between them begins, I have to admit that I was still feeling a bit let-down. It felt too pat, too unoriginal. But guess what--I am so very grateful that I stuck with the book. Somewhere along the way, it seemed to grow in depth. I began to see these characters as more than caricatures. Tal experienced a life changing event and grew. And while she didn't lose her yearning for peace, she did lose some of her naivete. And as the book moves forward, we get to know much more about Gazaman and his life. He is, in reality, far from the stereotype we are first introduced to.

So, in the end, I found this a satisfying read. Not perfect, but well worth the time it took to read.

The Crucible...random thoughts

The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

I first read this play decades ago (decades...sheesh!), back when I was in 8th grade. I loved it then, and I still love it today. (Eighth grade was actually a very good year in reading assignments, with winners like The Crucible, The Lord of the Flies, The Pearl, and Flowers for Algernon. It wasn't until high school that they threw in torturous assignments like the reading of Babbitt.) Anyway, The Crucible. For our literature unit this quarter, Annie and I are focusing on plays. So, what better play to start than with my very favorite. (Of course, I've probably read less than ten plays all told, and most of those have been Shakespeare. Nonetheless, this is my favorite.)

Why is it my favorite? (Aside from that thing about me not having many to choose from, that is.) For one thing, the Salem witch trials have always fascinated me. Oh yeah, in case you didn't know, that's what this play is about. A work of historical fiction, I suppose. Miller did fuse a few of the real people together to create certain characters, and of course, dramatic license was used. But the story is essentially the true story of the events in Salem in 1692. (And yes, of course, everyone is never going to agree completely on what happened. Wild theories will always abound, etc.)

But it's more than a simple look at history. It's a look at "witch hunts" in the general sense. Miller wrote this at the time of McCarthyism in the U.S., and this play can certainly be seen as an allegory. Annie and I discussed that a bit, but honestly we focused more on the paradox of the Puritan beliefs and their behavior. (Which is a kind of nice tie-in with our history studies at the moment, looking at the Pequot War.) How could a society so "God-fearing" and pious ultimately treat people so horrendously. The townspeople of Salem are definitely brimming with human frailties, as all people are. But how did they go from these "God-fearing" people to essentially murderers?

The version we read also had commentary by Miller mixed in. It was quite interesting to see his view of the characters, in his own words, in addition to how we saw them brought to life through the play. There was also an appendix, a scene he'd originally written for the play but decided to leave out as he felt it destroyed the flow. He stated that he really wished he could come up with a way to work it in. I wish he could have, too...as it really does change slightly the way I viewed one of the characters. But I don't want to give away too much there.

*****

Okay, so if you've been here before, you know already how much I despise my so-called book reviews, right? Despite how sweet you all are about them, I just feel like a phony. I have no analytical skills whatsoever. Face it, I seldom leave anyone with a clue as to what the book is even about. Well, guess what. I've come up with a solution! Now, I will no longer feel like I'm trying to fool anyone. I will no longer label these posts as "book reviews"...henceforth, they will be known as "book babble." Perfect, I'd say, as that is an honest look at what I really do...babble.

And hey, I think I'm going to use this as one of my 21 Cultures reads. It definitely showcased the culture of the Puritans in early New England. You don't think that's cheating, do you?