The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio- 2020 -

 

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio- 2020 - 

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL.

According to recent data about 10.5 million undocumented migrants lived in the United States in 2021, which constitutes roughly 3% of the total US population . Despite undocumented migrants’ impact on US society and its economy (especially in the agriculture, construction, and service work sectors and by paying billions of dollars in taxes each year), their voices rarely receive a platform due to a mix of the need for protective invisibility as well as xenophobia and racism.

 Villavícencío begin with a gripping vignette set during the night of the 2016 US presidential election. The author powerfully declares that she “understood that night would be her end, but she would not be ushered to an internment camp in sweatpants” . The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency propelled Villavícencío to profile migrants in ways that would reflect her family who are more than either “sufferers or dreamers” . Stressing her collaborators’ precarity, the author elucidates her methodology for collecting others’ stories: she changed all names in the book, did not make voice recordings of conversations, and destroyed all notes and transcriptions . The end result is a work that skillfully mixes the genres of political testimonio, biography, ethnography, and memoir. Having lived as an undocumented migrant herself and not identifying as a journalist set Villavícencío apart from other authors, as she cannot help but get deeply involved and “try to solve shit the way an immigrant’s kids try to solve shit for their parents because these people are all my parents” . She is open about her own mental health issues.

The Undocumented Americans was a very revelatory work for me.  I had no idea Undocumented people, subject to deportation, were on the front lines in the clean up efforts at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack. In the author's account of the life of Undocumented immigrants living on Staten Island, I learned how vulnerable they are to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and how many were highly educated.  I was fascinated to learn that oatmeal, a staple of my diet, is considered as a sacred food by Vodou healers,  Villavicencio explains why undocumented Hatians spractice Vodou beliefs as part of an anti-colonial heritage.

In a chapter devoted to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan the author details how years of neglect and outright lies caused the many undocumented immigrants to be forced to drink water made toxic by lead pipes,  

Villavicencio focuses a lot on the heavy use of alcohol  by undocumented immigrants as a means of escape.  As a highly educated person many immigrants were leary about talking to her.  It was very gratifying to see how she developed close personal relationship among undocumented immigrant women.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the author of the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans. Her work, which focuses on race, culture, and immigration, has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, Elle, n+1, The New Inquiry, Interview, and on NPR.

The Book Lovers Library by Madeline Martin - 2024 - 396 Pages

 

The Book Lovers Library by Madeline Martin - 2024 - 396 Pages

The Book Lovers Library is the fourth novel  by Madeline Martin upon which I have posted.  

In December of 2021 I read The Last Bookstore in London by Madeline Martin, set in London during the Blitz years of World War Two. I loved this deeply moving vivid account of the impact of Germany's bombing of London on a small Bookstore.

Last year I read her The Libraian Spy set during World War Two in Paris as well as Lyon and Lisbon. Paris is occupied by the Germans. Portugal is neutral but in danger of being invaded. People come from all over Europe to Lisbon hoping to get a visa to go to America.

Last Month I read her The Keeper of Hidden Books, set, mostly in Warsaw during it occupation during World War Two by the Germans, centered on a library.

The Book Lovera! Library takes place in England during World War Two.  The library is a subscription based business.  I liked this book so much,  was drawn so deeply into the lives of the characters that I became afraid for them.

In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. She and her beloved daughter, Olivia, have always managed just fine on their own, but with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she's left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots' Booklover's Library to take a chance on her with a job.

When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In the wake of being separated from her daughter, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library's quirky regulars. But the job doesn't come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and the work at the lending library forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.

As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever,

I really liked Emma's neighbours in the tenement house where she lived, her land lady Mrs Pickering with her adorable dog Tubby, the seemingly gruff older Mr  Sanderson, most of her colleagues at the ,library as well as some of the library  (I learned how a lending library worked, there is an explanation of them by the author)

You will love the ending.   One of the marvellous aspects of the work is all the novels mentioned, watching Olivia learn to love reading.  Ok and Tubby is a joy for dog lovers.

. Madeline Martin is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance with books translated into over twenty-five languages. She lives in sunny Florida with her husband (known as Mr. Awesome), two amazing daughters, and two very spoiled cats.

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain- 2015 - 244 Pages

 The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain- 2015 - 244 Pages

2015 Jewish Book of the Year.

"The Gustav Sonata is a work of extreme and painful beauty, the story of one profound love amid many failed relationships, and of the conflict between passion and self-control. Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists, and deserves, with this brilliant novel, to reach a wide new audience."

― Salman Rushdie

The Gustav Sonata” primarily takes place in pre and post-WWII Switzerland. It offers an interesting slant on the war and the meaning of neutrality by focusing on the lives of two different families affected by the greater conflict. It’s a deeply immersive story about loyalty during times of conflict, ambition, betrayal and family strife.

The novel centres around a Swiss boy named Gustav whose single mother Emilie struggles to make ends meet while working in an Emmental cheese factory. His father Erich died at an early age, but was once an assistant police chief during the tense period in the lead up to the war. In 1948, a six year old Gustav befriends a new Jewish boy named Anton at school. Emilie resents her son’s companion because she blames their diminished circumstances on the influx of Jewish refugees. Despite his mother’s objections, Gustav and Anton form a special bond which continues throughout their lives. Questions raised about how Emilie got to this difficult point are answered in the second part of the novel which moves back to 1937 to recount her tumultuous marriage with Erich. The third part of the book then skips far forward to the end of the 20th century to show how dilemmas about his family and his country’s past still resonate for Gustav in his later years.

The Gustav Sonata is a very powerful account, with turns I never saw coming but once they happened it was inevitable and perfect.

Rose Tremain's best-selling novels have won many awards, including the Baileys Women's Prize, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Prix Femina Etranger. Restoration, the first of her novels to feature Robert Merivel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes.

A Post in Observation of The 132nd Birthday of Katherine Mansfield

A post in observation of the 134 birthday of Katherine Mansfield 

Katherine Mansfield-A Getting Started Guide

As Irene Nemirovsky went to her death in a cattle car to Auschwitz, she had with her The Notebook of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield died January 9, 1923.   Like many another writer who died far too young (1888 to 1923-New Zealand) we wonder what she might have produced had she lived on another thirty years.    All of Mansfield's stories are now in the public domain so anyone can easily read them online.   I have read and posted on nearly all of her stories (the exceptions being a few very young age stories that I have not yet found online).     I have received number of E-mails asking me where one should start with Mansfield.    (I am a reader not a scholar.    I read a Mansfield story almost by accident ten  ago and fell in love with her work.   I also have read and posted on three great books about her as well.)

In observation of the anniversary of her death I have selected three Katherine Mansfield stories that will get a new reader into her work.   All of these stories are easy to read  and enjoyable.  

"Miss Brill"

Because I have a posting each one of Mansfield's stories, I found I can use my blogger stats to see which of her stories are being most widely read.  People from all over the world (including Bethlehem on Christmas Day!) have come  to my blog to read my post on "Miss Brill".   Most of the visitors were probably students so I can  for sure say "Miss Brill" is the most assigned in universities worldwide of her stories.     "Miss Brill" is my suggestion for your first (and if it comes to it your only) Katherine Mansfield story.   I have read it several times since my first  post and each time get more from my reading and continue to enjoy the experience.   The first time I read this wonderful story (about 5 pages) I was struck by how much Mansfield was able to put in a few pages and by the stunning undercutting of what I thought was my understanding of the plot as the story closes.     It is a very fun, sad, wise story.


from Katherine Mansfield journal



Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France
I mean something though. Its a very queer thing how craft comes into writing. I mean down to details. Par exemple. In Miss Brill I chose not only the length of every sentence, but even the sound of every sentence – I chose the rise and fall of every paragraph to fit her – and to fit her on that day at that very moment. After Id written it I read it aloud – numbers of times – just as one would play over a musical composition, trying to get it nearer and nearer to the expression of Miss Brill – until it fitted her.
Don't think I'm vain about the little sketch. Its the only method I wanted to explain. I often wonder whether other writers do the same. If a thing has really come off it seems to me there mustn't be one single word out of place or one word that could be taken out. Thats how I AIM at writing. It will take some time to get anywhere near there.

"The Doll''s House"

"The Doll's House" is set in the New Zealand of the 1890s.     Mansfield has a great passion for her native New Zealand.      "The Doll's House"  is a very closely observed account of children at play.   It showed me how the play of children reflects what they learn from their lives.    In the smallest of details Mansfield builds a world for us.  

"The Garden Party"

As "The Garden Party" opens Laura Sheridan under the supervision of her mother is planning a garden party.   Readers in the 1920s in England and New Zealand would be aware that a garden party was meant to be a prestigious near formal occasion and an affair that was found only among the upper classes.   One of the most coveted English society invitations was to the annual Garden party at Buckingham Palace.   Laura is supposed to be in charge but we can quickly see her mother is a bit overbearing.  Rather near the home of the Sheridan's there is what the Sheridan family views as a wretched squalid community.   Right before the party is set to begin they learn one of the workers for  their party who lives in that area was killed in an accident.   Laura wants to stop the party but her mother will not hear it.   After the party the mother has a jolly good charitable idea.   Why not pack up all the left over party food and take it to the family of the man that was killed?  (Of course with no thought to the fact that the cottagers had never eaten food like that all their lives.)   Laura goes into the area where the cottages are located.    Mansfield is such an artist that you can feel Laura's fear as she goes into this area.   It all seems dark and evil and ever so wretched.    Laura goes into the cottage and views the body of the deceased.   It is Laura's reaction to the body of the  man and the multiple interpretations that can be made of this that seem to give this story its power and lasting appeal.


"There lay a young man, fast asleep--sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy...happy...All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content."


Mansfield does not tell us what to make of this.   Is Laura just a silly rich girl who did not know that the poor have lives too or does she experience some kind of revelation when she sees the body?   Is this a mockery of  accepted views of death or is it a celebration of  them?   There is a nuch more to the story but I hope some may want to read it so I will not tell more of the plot.



I have read this story several times now and it is a marvelous account of class structures in the 1920s, among many other things.   I quoted a bit from the text so new readers can see her beautiful prose at work.

All these stories can be read at the New Zealand Electronic Text center, a great reading web page.   If you go to Youtube.com you will also find a number of videos relating to Katherine Mansfield.  

Here is a link to all of my Mansfield posts-The Reading Life Katherine Mansfield Project

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/search/label/Katherine%20Mansfield

The best book on her life and work is Katherine Mansfield: The Story Teller by Kathleen Jones

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/search/label/Katherine%20Mansfield

I highly recommend Katherine's Wish by Linda Lappin, a novel based on the last year of Mansfield's Life

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2016/02/katherine-wish-by-linda-lappin-2008.html

Morphologies Masterclass- Alison MacLeod on Katherine Mansfield 

I highly recommend this lecture - from the 2013 Manchester Literature Festival

https://youtu.be/a2DuHLQnFQM

The Katherine Mansfield Society website is a very valuable resource

https://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/

Mel u




Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages

 

Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages 

Very  soon after  France surrendered to the Nazis, in May of 1940, the Germans made it their goal to appropriate France's  wine.  Wine was a  important part of daily French life and the vast vineyards supported much of the population.  Top Nazis officials fancied themselves experts on wine.

 As the war went on the Germans soon required all wine to sold to Germans, served in restaurants only open to Germans.  Vineyard workers were conscripted to work in Germany.  Vital horses were taken.

Vineyard owners began to seek ways to hide their products. 

They hid their most prized wines immediately, knowing that the Germans would take them and, more importantly, not appreciate them. They built walls in their cellars, closing in the wines behind them, and had their children collect spiders so they'd spin webs to make the wall look older. Dust from old carpets were collected to put on cheap bottles to make them appear rare.

These are the true stories of vignerons who sheltered Jewish refugees in their cellars and of winemakers who risked their lives to aid the resistance. They made chemicals in secret laboratories to fuel the resistance and fled from the Gestapo when arrests became imminent.

There were treacheries too, as some of the nation's winemakers supported the Vichy regime, or the Germans themselves, and collaborated.

Don and Petie Kladstrup are former journalists who have written extensively about wine and France for numerous publications. Don, a winner of three Emmys and numerous other awards, was a foreign correspondent for ABC and CBS television news. Petie, an Overseas Press Club winner, was a newspaper journalist and more recently protocol officer for the U.S. ambassador to UNESCO. The Kladstrups divide their time between Paris and Normandy

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - 2022- 791 Pages

 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - 2022- 791 Pages 

Demon Copperhead is set in western Virginia in the Appalacians.  It is the story of an orphan growing up in the midst of the opiod epidemic.  Kingsolver modeled it meticulously on another novel about an orphan, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.  Dickens would be proud.

A New York Times "Ten Best Books of 2022 * An Oprah's Book Club Selection * An Instant New York Times Bestseller *

 An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller * A #1 Washington Post Bestseller

"Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient." —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero's unforgettable journey to maturity

Told my Damon (he his given a nickname of Damon), his unwed teenage mother gives birth to him in her trailer.

Kingsolver shows us the impact of the coal mines, the stripping of the forests,  the exploration of Appalacia going back two hundred years.  The only jobs are as coal miners, the schools are terrible, the health care worse and the foster system is a cruel joke.  

Purdue Pharmaceutical company has decided this would be the perfect place to market a pain killer, oxytocin which ends up furthering the destruction of the community.  Doctors get free trips for prescribing it.  Once you start on it, you are made miserable once the impact wears down.

We follow Demon through his relationship with a very abusive stepfather, the death of his mother, his time in foster care, his friendships and romances.  Football is every thing in his town and he becomes a star player.  Death and addiction rule until they don't thanks to the resliance of Damon and some help.  

You will love the ending. Like a Dickens novel, every chapter wants you waiting to find out what happens next.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, Prodigal Summer, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. With her husband and daughters she authored the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2000 was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley - 2024 - 233 Pages

 Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley - 2024 - 233 Pages

"The human race finds itself again under threat of a rising global fascist movement. In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people all across the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past.

Democracy requires a common understanding of reality, a shared view of what has happened, that informs ordinary citizens’ decisions about what should happen, now and in the future. Authoritarians target this shared understanding, seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused. By setting us against each other, authoritarians represent themselves as the sole solution.

In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, the authoritarian right’s tip of the spear, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress.

In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And he shows that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, he explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway.

Deeply informed and urgently needed, Erasing History is a global call to action for those who wish to preserve democracy—in America and abroad—before it is too late." From the publisher 

Jason Stanley employs details from the rise of Nazism in Germany to explain how authoritarians systematically destroy the knowledge of history, seeking to convince people they are aiming at restoring a period in which times were much better. They accuse one segment of society as out to destroy the country. In Nazi Germany it was the Jews, in India now it is Muslims, in America immigrants. Authoritarians universally vilify the LGTBQ in their societies, insist women should be first of all wives and breeders. In Russia, a totally authoritarianism culture, one man is the great leader.

In America the history of slavery was for generations taught as not harmful to the slaves. Some school text books said slaves were better off in America. In India, the role of Muslims in Indian history is not taught in schools, in Russia historical truths involving the past independence of the Ukraine have been transformed into the notion that it was always part of Russia.

In America absurdities are used to hide the genocide inflicted on Native Americans by Europeans. The American founding fathers are treated like saints. These things require a take over of how schools teach history.

  In the United States Stanley details how the governor of Florida as done all he can to turn schools into parrots for the views of trump and his sycophants.  

There is so much of great value in this book.  Sadly those supporters of authoritarians world wide, especially in America will not read this or probably any other book.

"I am the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. I am also an honorary professor at the Kyiv School of Economics, where I use my salary to support the Come Back Alive Foundation.

Before coming to Yale in 2013, I was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. I have also been a Professor at the University of Michigan (2000-4) and Cornell University (1995-2000). My PhD was earned in 1995 at the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT (Robert Stalnaker, chair), and I received my BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1990.

My first book is Knowledge and Practical Interests published in 2005 by Oxford University Press. It was the winner of the 2007 American Philosophical Association book prize. My second book, Language in Context, also OUP, was published in 2007. This is a collection of my papers in semantics published between 2000 and 2007 on the topic of linguistic communication and context. My third book, Know How, was published in 2011, also with OUP. My fourth book, How Propaganda Works, was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2015. It was the winner of the 2016 PROSE award for the subject area of philosophy. The proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Prison Policy Initiative. My fifth book is How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Penguin Random House, 2018).

My last book, published in November, 2023, is The Politics of Language, co-authored with David Beaver, with Princeton University Press .  My newest book is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, published in September, 2024 with One Signal Publishers, a division of Simon and Schuster."