Little Bee

There are more than 16 million refugees worldwide, and about 8 million of those have had books written about them.  Okay, that's a callous exageration but when Little Bee by Chris Cleave was picked for my book club, I wasn't sure I could read another book about an elite white person helping a disenfranchised black person. Certainly there is hope in books like Strength in What Remains and What Is The What; the protagonists end up with a better quality life thanks to helpful strangers.  But I found these stories to be the exception, not the rule. When so many middle class Americans are struggling, I just found these one in a million (or, one in 16 million) cases of illegal immigrants getting college educations, etc. unbelievable.

So imagine my surprise when Little Bee turned out to exactly what I needed to wipe the cynical smirk off my face. First and foremost, it's the most compelling book I've read in a long while.  A real page turner. Cleave can craft a sentence that is humorous while maintaining humility. Second, his characters are flawed, which makes them overall more believable. Little Bee has serious flaws as do her white patrons, Andrew and Sarah.

This book is enough worth reading that I don't want to spoil it with many plot details.

5/5 netflix stars

The Help and Strength in What Remains

The Revolutions of 1989 were by and large bloodless; the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions of other Eastern Bloc countries resulted in the end of Communism and peaceful transfer of power. Twenty years before that Dr. Martin Luther King epitomized the non-violent struggle for civil rights.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett describes the stories of three women: one privileged white woman who along with two African American maids work together to tell the stories of behind the scenes lives, and in the process create a non-violent revolution in Jackson, Mississippi.  Each woman makes personal sacrifices for the greater good-- even though at the time they have no idea what that good will be.  Ms. Stockett tells the story of The Help in three viewpoints-- Skeeter's, Aibileen's and Minny's.  Each woman has a personal impetus to enact change, but what's amazing is how the three of them come to work together.
The revolutions of 1989 were not all peaceful. Tianamen Square took place that summer.  Likewise, 1994 brought about revolutions too. The very violent kind.  Extreme poverty for the majority and extreme wealth for the minority set the catalyst for the ethic genocides in Burundi and Rwanda.  Tracy Kidder relays Deo's story in Strength in What Remains.  Similar to What is the What, Deo miraculously flees Burundi and lands in New York with $200, no place to live and barely understanding a word of English.  Within five years he's enrolled at Columbia and soon after that, Dartmouth Medical School.  Mr. Kidder relays Deo's story in a series of viewpoints also.  He writes as a journalist, telling Deo's history as Deo remembers it.  Then he tells the history of the country, so the reader can better understand how events took a turn from the worse, and finally, he tells his story: how he met Deo and his impressions of him and his relationship to him and their return together to Burundi.  Mr. Kidder's document seemed a more complete story than What is the What.
In The Help, Skeeter is amazed that Aibileen is such a voracious reader, and that other maids who work for her friends have gone to college and aspire to send their children to college.  Many of white women Skeeter is friends with cannot see past the color and occupation of their maids.  But what surprised me was that Deo's story in New York was similar.  He'd come from being an intern at a hospital in Burundi to being a grocery delivery boy who made $15 a week in New York.  Just as the family Aibileen works for dehumanizes her by not even allowing her to use a bathroom in the house, Deo's employer literally pokes him with a stick to make him work.
Both books are good reminders that revolutions are, and should be, dynamic and constant.  I give both 5/5 netflix stars.

Lulu in Marrakech

If you could travel to exotic locales and live a life of percieved ennui, maybe just volunteering for some local projects, would you? Would you forfeit your identity, even from your family? Would you risk your life and be prepared to go to jail in a foreign country? Lulu Sawyer does all this, in Diane Johnson's book, Lulu in Marrakech.

We don't know a lot about how and why Lulu became involved in the CIA, but as a young agent without a family, she is able to deftly move place to place without prompting suspicion. Lulu isn't a robot; like many 30 year old, liberal educated women, she questions the role of women in world society, specifically focussing on her new post in Morocco. She yearns to marry Ian, the man whom she ostensibly travels to Marrakech to be with, although he could in fact be part of a larger plot which Lulu is supposed to keep tabs on.

Ms. Johnson expands her themes of Americans abroad much as she did in Le Divorce. Lulu and a fellow guest and expat, Posy, try to navigate as women in a Muslim (albeit liberal) society and are confronted with other European women who have conflicting views about the roles of Muslim women-- some believe they deserve to learn to read, while others think, "what's the point?".

Lulu's covert task comes to a head by the end of the book, but along the way she has to decide where her allegiances lie; are the friends she's made really friends? What personal risks, if any, will she take to maintain those friendships?

Ms. Johnson, through our heroine Lulu, is able to address non-PC topics and sterotypes and ultimately, those become the main themes of the book-- not Lulu's mission.

I loved this book. I loved that it was current and provacative, yet at times also really funny. I give this 5/5 netflix stars.

What is the What

11:04 AM matt: did you make it through what is the what?

me: almost! I have about30 pages left!

what were your thoughts?

matt: well

it's too long by about half

11:05 AM and maybe it was very true to the guy's voice, but it seemed pretty flat.

i wasn't a huge fan

me: yeah, that's what I thought too!

11:06 AM matt: but i did like seeing how his refuge community sort of knit itself together

me: I actually thought the "voice" changed a lot-- it wasn't consistent

and I didn't like the narrating to the present day characters-- like the nurse in the ER or the attackers' son

I feel guilty for not liking it more

11:07 AM matt: yeah i didn't like that either - really really pedantic.

11:08 AM i started to feel guilty and then realized that a david eggars book is not to be confused with the actual plight of these people, you know

me: I think he would have done better to have a different ghost writer

Eggers I think was too focussed on his own story

(heartbreaking work of staggering genius)

11:09 AM matt: i also wonder if this type of book is just the P.C. modern version of travel narratives like the heart of darkness and robinson crusoe

me: it did seem politically motivated

matt: which would sort of cast in a light of appropriation of these peoples' story

me: I did like that the story became more real

11:10 AM It made it make more sense to me

I felt sad about William K, and Tabitha...

which isn't something you get from the news necessarily

11:11 AM matt: well true. the book definitely wasn't terrible, and is effective as a educational or political tool, which is probably what it was meant as

but if i'd realized that beforehand i probably wouldn't have started it

when is your book club?

11:14 AM me: book club is Saturday!

I might be the only one who read it

The Pickup

Besides being a book on my shelf, The Pickup was authored by Nadine Gordimer, a friend of Paul Theroux, so after reading his his novellas, I thought I'd give this a shot. I read July's People a few years ago and found it both uncomfortable and probably accurate. Ms. Gordimer is a white African, and, like Doris Lessing or other female, white, African writers, carries a heavy mantle. She writes about race conflict, but in an intimate, yet removed, manner.
The Pickup details a relationship between Julie, a privelaged white South African woman, and her "pick-up" lover, Adbu, someone from a more 3rd world African country. At first I thought The Pickup was a comment on the current U.S. policy on "illegals" but came to realize that many countries have this conflict and that while I could see current U.S. debate in the characters, it was also very space specific. To mention that Julie is privelaged is like saying the earth is round; she chooses to live a bohemian lifestyle, maybe working, maybe not, in a small cottage in the city, away from her suburban upbringing and well-to-do father. She regularly meets a group of friends at the L.A. Cafe and these friends serve as her surrogate family. They all come and go, not answering to anyone. She meets Abdu when she gets in an accident and needs her car repaired. On impulse she invites him to coffee at her cafe and from there it goes. She seems sincere, but it's unclear what she sees in him-- is he a further act of revolt from her father? And what does he see in her besides a possible entree into "legal" society? They take their relationship farther than anyone imagines, and Julie can ask for general favors from her family: money to provide a needed well for his family (a liberal ideal of service) but cannot ask her father for specific help obtaining visas. Abdu can provide for her adventure and something different (she does not shy away from, nor complain about rustic conditions) but cannot provide the ultimate security for her: an accepting family.
Ms. Gordimer writes this book in the 3rd person passive voice, making it difficult to get to fully know or identify with the characters, which is maybe the point. She interjects editorial, pointing out that Julie's, and that of her friends and family, status would give allow her to emigrate country to country, never really being "illegal" but Abdu, by virtue of his race, religion and country of birth, can never be welcomed anywhere but there.
I liked this book but didn't love it. I had a hard time identifying with any of the characters although by the end I was able to sympathize with the decisions each made. I give this book 3/5 netflix stars.