Month: February 2010

Warriors Don’t Cry

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Beals, Melba Pattillo. Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High. New York: Pocket Books, 1994.

If you stop and think about it, 1957 was not that long ago. Think about the span of a lifetime, on average. Think about the course of history and how slowly it moves. 1957, given all that, was yesterday. While we do not have clear lines of segregation that we did back then (water fountains, bathrooms and backs of buses to name a few) we still have the invisible lines that separate white from black. If that were not the case we wouldn’t have the rash of “firsts” that we have had recently: first black coach to win the Superbowl, first black President of the United States…These firsts would have happened years ago if the invisible line didn’t still exist to a certain degree.

I cannot imagine Melba Patillo Beals’s life. One of the scariest scenes for me was when she first tried to go to Central High after desegregation was declared. The hatred and violence she described seemed subhuman, barbaric even. Could we really live in a society that contained so much hatred? The obvious answer is yes, and we still do.

True to Beals’s title, Warriors Don’t Cry is a “searing memoir of the battle to integrate.” Every day was a struggle. Civil rights were hardly observed in a civil manner. Utter hatred spawned uncontrolled violence. For Melba Beals this hatred was not something she read about or glanced at on the television. She live it in every step she took. She experienced it first hand simply because of the color of her skin. How brave of her to write it all down! How lucky for us she decided to remember it all! Warriors Don’t Cry is not an eye-opener. We have seen these things all along. Her memoir keeps it all in view.

While I didn’t find any quotes that struck me one way or another I was moved by Melba’s experience with her “own” people. In addition to whites who were having an extremely hard time accepting integration, there were a fair number of blacks who didn’t want it either. Melba was making enemies on both sides of the color divide.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Civil Rights and Wrongs” (p 49).

Hiding Place

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Azzopardi, Trezza. The Hiding Place. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

    I have to start by saying I would love to meet William Gedney just to ask him about the photograph on the cover of The Hiding Place. I guess Francine Kass (who designed the cover) would be more appropriate to ask of these questions. Nevertheless, here are the things I would ask of either:

    1. The girls are in the kitchen obviously paring something (apples? potatoes?). Why do they all have one leg up; why are they standing like storks?
    2. The painting of the Last Supper – was that meant to be symbolic since the girls are standing in a kitchen?
    3. There is a fourth pair of feet and evidence of a little knee behind the child leaning on the refrigerator. Who is she and why isn’t she more visible? I took this to be Dolores, the narrator of The Hiding Place. She is the youngest daughter and paid attention to the least. More symbolism?

    The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi is sad, sad, sad. Dolores Gauci is the youngest of six daughters born to Maltese immigrants Frankie and Mary. Her view on the world is both tragic and innocent. She is at once stoic and childish; solemn and naive. What Dolores sees is a family slowly dismantled by a gambling and always losing father. As her siblings are bartered away Dolores must face a grim childhood with fewer and fewer protections as even her mother’s will to survive slips away. Serving as the backdrop for the Gauci family is the 1960s landscape of Cardiff, Wales, an immigration town populated with citizens hardened enough to do just about anything to survive.

    Favorite lines: “Her fury travels down the spoon and into Luca’s dinner. I am breast-fed: I get rage straight from the source” (p 22), “As with all truth, there is another version” (p 75), and “She’ll be scrubbing the steps again, probably – it’s a job best done in anger” (p 126).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter, “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123).

    Company of Three

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    O’Connor, Varley. Company of Three. Chapel hill: Algonquin Books, 2003.

    There is mystery that surrounds Company of Three. At face value it is the story of three actors struggling to see their name in lights on Broadway. New york City in the 1970s is a hub for creative activity such as dance and the theater and Robert, Patrick and Irene stand in the spotlight, ready as ever for their close ups. Company of Three follows their successes, their failures, their struggles. It examines their friendships and love affairs and what they mean to one another. Ultimately, it is the story of how far they would go for their careers and for each other.

    In truth, it is that friendship that has me scratching my head. At one point in the story the three friends vow to always be there for one another and someday run a theater together. They even seal the deal in blood. Yet, despite their close bond and the pact they have made, Patrick keeps some very dark secrets from his friends. Curiously, he lies continuously so his connection to Robert and Irene is questionable.

    Best quote (and why I think people take up acting): “Acting was not the departure from myself that I thought it would be, but rather a journey into the very parts of myself I thought I would rescue me from” (p 57).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “All the World’s a Stage” (p 7).

    Why Things Bite Back

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    Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

    I first became interested in Why Things Bite Back when I thought of the title in relation to health and flu vaccinations. The more aggressively we try to fight the ills of the seasonal flu the more resilient the virus gets.  Now with the vast-reaching and rapid spread of the H1N1 virus Why Things Bite Back seems even more telling.

    Edward Tenner takes an in-depth look at the technology that first set out to make our lives easier, more convenient, and faster: technologies that include chemistry, invention, ingenuity and just plain luck. The advances science and medicine don’t come without fault and failure. It’s these drawbacks that Tenner describes as “revenges.” Seat belts that save adults but kill children, for example. The unexpected thrill to Tenner’s book is that it isn’t dry and didactic. There is actual humor hidden in the irony.

    My favorite line (for obvious reasons), “…what are we to make of stepping from office elevators into our cars and driving to health clubs to use treadmills (a feature of nineteenth-century prisons)…” (p 10).

    BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 300s” (p 66).

    Fire Next Time

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    Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.

    The Fire Next Time is a slim yet powerful 120 pages. Baldwin does not waste a single page on empty words or phrases. Every sentence is an argument for America to beware of “the fire next time.” He implores the reader to take a page from history and not turn a blind eye to it; we must change the course of racial inequality in order to survive. Even though The Fire Next Time was published not even ten years after the integration of Little Rock’s (Arkansas) Central High Baldwin’s fiery words hold true today.

    The title, The Fire Next Time, is drawn from a “recreation of the Bible in a slave song” – ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time’ (p 120), yet there are several examples of such warning scattered throughout the entire book. This warning is in a couple of my favorite quotes.

    “But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man’s history” (p 71), and “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets ans one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time” (p 105).

    BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two chapters: “African American Fiction: He Say (p 10), even though it isn’t fiction, and again in the chapter “Essaying Essays” (p 81).

    February ’10 is…

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    Off the top of my head, I’m not sure what to call February besides another cold, cold month. I could get all giddy and self-absorbed in the fact that it’s my birth month (so maybe I should be reading something by me – ha), but that doesn’t seem to be all that productive. Besides, my published work would take all of two minutes to read! February is a visit with Mr. Richard Marx II (formally known as Mr. Bubblegum). We have a date in three weeks. February is more time with Dr. Ruth. No offense, but after this month I would like to think I’m on the road to recovery and will not need so much attention in that area in the future. I have started training for Just ‘Cause and have moved my feet over 50 miles so far.

    I should point out the obvious. This is late. February has also started out as my month to be overextended in a big way. Not sure if that’s a good thing.

    For books it has been and will be:

    • Company of Three by Varley O’Connor ~ in honor of February being National Theater Month. Okay, so if you can’t get there, read about it!
    • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin ~ in honor of Black History Month
    • Warriors Don’t Cry: a Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High by Melba Patillo Beals ~ in honor of Civil Rights month
    • Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder ~ in honor of medical workers in Haiti right now.
    • Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner ~in honor of National Science month.

    There is a rumor of another LibraryThing Early Review book. The publisher was nice enough to send me a thank you for reviewing the book, but until I actually have it in my hand I won’t be mentioning it here.

    Little Friend

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    Tartt, Donna. The Little Friend. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

    In a nutshell The Little Friend is about Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, a twelve-year-old girl who decides she simply must solve the mystery of who killed her nine-year-old brother when she was just an infant. All Harriet knows of the incident is that little Robin was found hung from a tree on Mother’s Day and nobody knew why. During her attempts to solve the mystery Harriet and her sidekick Hely get themselves into troubles far more adult than their years. Larger Mississippi-southern issues such as poverty and prejudice encircle  more complicated crimes such as deception, drugs, and death.

    I love the way Donna Tartt writes, but was confused by plot. 555 is a long time to be reading about a mystery that doesn’t really get solved. The ambiguous ending is ripe for a sequel. Yet, there are seemingly unimportant characters that float in and out of the plot without an apparent role in the story (like Harriet’s sister Allison). Could they come back with a stronger presence in another book? One other concern is that The Little Friend is supposed to be a story set in the 1970’s. Were there meth labs back then?

    When you first meet Harriet you think she has all the beginnings of a serial killer: “She could set the house on fire if she wanted to, and no one would be there to stop here” (p 67), and “…this was the hallmark of Harriet’s touch: she could scare the daylights out of you, and you weren’t even sure why” (p 74).

    BookLust Twist: There is no doubt in my mind that Nancy Pearl loved this book and thought of it often. Case in point: it’s mentioned in Book Lust in the chapters “Families in Trouble” (p 82) because after little Robin is found murdered, nothing is ever the same for his family, and “Girls Growing Up” (p 102) because Harriet, Robin’s sister, grows up between the 555 pages of The Little Friend, as well as in the introduction (p xi) where Pearl says she knew she would love The Little Friend from the very first sentence. Little Friend is also mentioned in More Book Lust in the chapters “Lines that Linger; Sentences that Stick” (p 143) – the same first sentence Pearl mentioned in Book Lust, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” (p 238) because of its creepy doll face – a total of five mentions between the two Lust books. I can’t blame Pearl because Little Friend does fit nicely into each and every chapter mentioned.