Sylvia’s Comments (group member since Feb 01, 2017)

Sylvia’s comments from the Around the World in 80 Books group.

I’m down with whatever the group decides! Still waiting on my copy of Other Russia’s, but I’ll jump into the conversation as soon as I do. Happy New Year, all!

Well - I’ve finished this one! Huzzah! A few thoughts:

1. I felt like a lot of the time I didn’t really know quite what was going on, and I wondered how much that is because I’m reading in translation versus that Chang’s writing in the modernist style versus either her skill as a writer or my skill as a reader. Not sure - maybe a bit of all. It didn’t bother me too much, but it did stand out to me as I read. I just felt like I was along for the ride, and I have a much higher tolerance for not knowing what’s going on in a shorter story, anyway.

2. I felt that a major theme running throughout was the Westernization of China, about which Chang seems to have mixed feelings. This seemed especially true in Red Rose, White Rose, but it also comes up in the Golden Cangue and some of the other stories, too.

3. What is going on with the relationships between men and women in this book? All their interactions seem so bizarre to me - very little effective communication, and they always seem to be making quite rash decisions about relationships (I realize this is a thing humans sometimes do). Anyone have thoughts on this? I don’t know if this is a cultural thing, an era thing, or what. Everyone seems to be making compromises and generally deciding to be unhappy and/or to make other people unhappy.

4. Favorite story? Love in a Fallen City - hands down. I liked all the character development and was interested in the choices Liusu has to make to secure her own future along the way. The role of the fall of Hong Kong in the story also made me want to look into more of the history - haven’t done this yet, though.

I’m enjoying it so far. Her style is quite raw, which is very effective, and I’m loving the placement of the text in a lot of places.

Thanks for the info and update, Claire!

And ditto what she said about not finishing - that’s happened to me with some of our other books. This was a strange and hard one for sure!

I'd echo most of what Claire shared above - thanks for your insights!

The way Arenas talked about sex throughout most of the book made me deeply uncomfortable. I was trying to parse out exactly what made me uncomfortable, and I think it was the level of promiscuity described, the culture of very public sex, and sexual violence. I liked how Claire drew out the contrast between his own sexual exploits and his adamant, repeated references to his mother's chastity throughout her life. I didn't so much doubt his narrative of his own sexual exploits as his assessment of his mother's lackthereof.

When Cait and I were in VA last week, we also talked about the matter-of-fact way he talks about his sexual experiences as a child, particularly sex with animals. He narrates this in a way that suggests it was a regular part of everyone's life, so much so that it actually made me think: Am I the weird one here? I would be very interested to read other accounts of growing up in the Cuban countryside... I also wondered about whether there was sexual abuse as part of his childhood that wasn't narrated, given some of the other things that were (incest and bestiality).

When he got to talking more about the political changes in Cuba, I enjoyed the book a lot more, especially thinking about the role of writers/artists within and in opposition to the regime (I also didn't know about Garcia Marquez' support of Castro).

A few more things I struggled with:
- How he talked about other gay men, especially those he labeled "fairies" and would use feminine pronouns for. His use of "they" and "them" when talking about other gay men, as if a separate group.
- Misogynistic and racist overtones, as Claire mentions above.
- Hard to keep track of friends and whether or not they're informing on him/what the status of their relationship is. Although, to be fair, it seems that it was often hard for him to keep track of that, too.

Some things I found interesting/enjoyable:
- Descriptions of connection to the land and the sea: "To farm the land is an act of love, a legendary act. There is a tacit complicity between the plant or seed and the person who is caring for it."
- Interesting and challenging commentary on life within a dictatorship, such as this on the suicide of Olga Andreu: "There are times when living means to degrade yourself, to make compromises, to be bored to death."
- His reflections on Cuban culture: "I think that Cubans are defined by noise; it seems to be inherent in their nature, and also part of their exhibitionism. They need to bother others; they can neither enjoy nor suffer in silence."
- His reflections on his exile, the idea of statelessness, and how you have a longing for a place that no longer exists.

Link for People's Republic of China:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

I can do China, if no one else wants that one.

Hey y’all - thanks to those who slogged through this one. I appreciated reading your comments and perspectives. I was trying to read this while attending an intensive weekend of workshops on refugees, torture, and anti-racism work. Which was all really good and really hard. But I just could not handle reading something super racist at the same time. It was so jarring! I think I have to give up on finishing it, but I am really happy that we do the polls, because now I have a ready-made list of other books from Venezuela to tackle.

Huzzah! I finished a book in time to participate in discussion!

I loved this one. I’d echo what y’all had already stated about the impact of the Made in USA designation on the bomb (understated yet so powerful). I was also interested to learn about the Palestinian community in Lebanon - I didn’t know much about that. I’m much more familiar with the situation within Palestine and neighboring Jordan. So I’ll definitely be looking into more of the history now that I’ve gotten a taste from this one story.

One of the main things that stuck out to me so much throughout the whole book is how the specter of war and violence is continually lurking in the background, coloring most other aspects of life. I felt it was a powerful visual representation of what it might be like to live in the midst of war: people live their lives, but the fear and the evidence of violence and terror is also constantly present.

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/a...
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/a...
Above are two short works by well-known Chadian author and playwright Koulsy Lamko.

This website also has some short works in translation, including a poem (scroll down to the bottom of the page), and a collection of transcribed folk tales (click on the link for Folk Tales and Legends of Chad). http://www.tchad.org/research/literat...

Happy reading!

I can do the poll for North Korea - it looks like that is still open? Will get started ASAP. Sorry I’m so slow!!!

Great point, Cait. It's definitely not completely due to his culture, but I imagine that it greatly enhanced his natural abilities in that area and also gave him a venue in which to use them. So he could function within an existing network rather than having to create one from scratch, although he certainly contributed to it and expanded it. Interesting to think of how we here in the US do or don't have similar networks. In some ways I feel like I have some serious similar ones through church and especially pastor colleagues, but I can't imagine they would be at all functioning without technology in the way that Daoud's seem to. I also wonder if people from smaller towns have something a bit more similar. I'm noticing that folks from small town ND seem to be very connected, especially through family ties and even if they don't live in their small town anymore. So overall, 🤷‍♀️

Two things:
1. In relation to Cait's comment about Daoud being so well-connected, this seems to be a particular function of the culture of indigenous people in that area (it's not really unique to Daoud). The kinship networks in and among villages and the systems of tribal governance are extremely well-developed (he mentions the deep knowledge of families that exists in the villages, for example). The strength of these networks is especially clear considering that they continued to function even in the midst of the ongoing violence and genocide. You could hear Daoud's sadness at the continuing loss of this way of life.

2. Re: Daoud's "optimistic" outlook: I work with people at the best and worst times of their lives, and as far as I can tell, there is not a clear way to account for why some people are so resilient in the face of trauma and some people are not. In my experience, it's not about the "severity" of the trauma, and it's not only to do with the resources a person has to deal with whatever trauma they experienced. A lot seems to be down to personality and internal traits that are really difficult to pinpoint. Perhaps Daoud was encouraged to sanitize or make more hopeful aspects of his account, I don't know. But to me, he appears to be one of those unique people for whom hope remains in the very darkest of places; who is able to see the absurdity of human life and laugh at it. Because of that, he is able to tell this story, and to give at least some voice to those who could not tell their stories - those for whom the trauma was too much. I'm thinking of the man whose young daughter was killed in front of him and the woman who hanged herself. If Daoud wasn't able to talk about his own story, theirs would be lost, too.

A side note: on some level, people want to hear stories like Daoud's because most of us need to believe that meaning can be taken from the horror, that somehow at least a bit of it can be turned to the good. I don't think Daoud sugarcoats what happened, but he does suggest meaning in the midst of it, which not all people can do and not all people think should be done.

I think of Daoud as being more in a similar vein to Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (about his experiences in the concentration camps), whereas (as least what I read of) In the Crosshairs seemed more similar to Night by Elie Wiesel. They're both important, but have very different approaches to explaining experiences of profound suffering and trauma.

Okay, so I had a totally different reading on the ending. I agree with previous comments that the one line about "being penetrated by a billion phalluses" or whatever was definitely written by a man and was weirdly rapey. BUT apart from that one line, I actually quite liked the ending. This whole book appealed to me because it struck me as magical realism in the vein of Isabelle Allende, whom I love. And I just love the genre as a whole. So to me, the ending IS what really happened to Jasmine (it's magical, but that's okay). It's not some way for the author to avoid "what really happened" (which we would assume is a terrible rape-murder à la The Lovely Bones).

Instead, through this magical means, Jasmine escapes a life lived under this oppressive male gaze, which exerts a psychological toll and means that, like the leopard, she can't think straight.

She also escapes marriage, which would have almost certainly been in her near future, and which she seems to have had no interest in. I actually even wondered in the beginning if she was asexual, given how she talks about sex in her chapter. That idea I think is undercut by the final chapter. However, I think it's really interesting that her sexual fantasy or experience at the end is not with another person, per se, but actually sort of with the universe. And maybe that redeems for her what she describes in the first chapter as "a putrid piece of meat."


A couple of other thoughts:
What do y'all see as the connection, if any, between the "white handbag" syndrome of men described at the beginning and the white book carried by the jinn or whomever at the end?

Also: fascinated by the connection between Jasmine (her chapter's called "The Queen") and Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba (Nasir makes this connection explicitly). I did a paper on her for an Old Testament class, and I could go pretty deep into the weeds on this one, so would love to hear any of your thoughts about this.

So - loved reading y'all's responses about the violence against women (and men, notably Ali) and about how this reads to Westerners and our responsibility as Western readers not to mark this in the "See, Muslims are terrible and hate women" stereotype column because, as Cait so clearly pointed out, it's not "for us".

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the snack bar guy. He was so interesting to me in that he seems to have a real awareness of the heaviness of that male gaze that Jasmine so clearly articulates in her chapter yet also participates in that himself (and to some extent acknowledges that he does). He also has this really interesting anti-intellectual streak, identifying the university culture as poisonous and damaging to actually intelligent/brilliant people (what a horrible story about Waddah!). Nasir seems to be such an intelligent and perceptive person himself, and he lives at least adjacent to this academic world but also remains separate and denigrates it. And what do you make of his chapter title "A Man Blinded to this Disconcerting World by Supernatural Delusions"?

I'm Sylvia - also an Auggie, which is how I know Beth and Cait. I'm a Lutheran pastor serving in Bismarck, ND. The past three years, I've set myself a goal to read 50 books per year, and like many of you, I've been trying to increase the diversity of the authors I'm reading. My to-read stack is very tall! I really miss the opportunity to discuss what I'm reading with other people now that I'm not in school anymore, so I'm excited to be a part of this group

A couple of words just based on where I'm at:
I just moved to a new city and am doing all kinds of adjusting for that, so on the one hand, I have a lot of time to read, but on the other hand, it's been a real struggle for me to get through some of the books (especially the Syria one) because they are really depressing and I haven't been in a good place to deal with that (#firstworldproblems, I know). Persepolis was a lot easier for me because it's very funny despite dealing with extremely difficult issues. Now that I'm not in the process of moving and starting a new job, I think I'll be better able to finish the books in the time frame so I can actually participate in discussions. Thanks for keeping this going!

Loved this one, again! (Read it about 10 years back for the first time.) What struck me so much this time was the dynamic for her of being marginalized as Iranian in Europe, but then marginalized in Iran for being too Westernized on her return. She seemed to be suffering as much (albeit in different ways) during her years "safely" away in Europe as she was in Iran during wartime and under an extremely repressive regime. I'm still pondering over the complex connections between family, culture, physical danger/safety, and mental health/illness explored here. Sorry I'm a bit late to this feed - Easter got in the way!