Lynzo > Recent Status Updates

I'm happy to be rereading this one, and I am learning all sorts of new Spanish vocabulary. This has been working really well for me, rereading books I really liked that have been translated into Spanish.

"But to not to believe in the possibility of dramatic change is to forget that things *have* changed, not enough, of course, but enough to show what is possible. We have been surprised before in history. We can be surprised again. Indeed we can *do* the surprising."

Damn, Howard Zinn walked the walk. These stories are so powerful because as he points out, there were a lot of ordinary people resisting in big and small ways to push the needle closer to justice. Inspirational as all hell, which I will take right now. RESIST.

"Many of us feel better about aging because the old scripts that told us life ends at 30 or 40, that we turn into sexless zombies who bitch bitch bitch all the time and make everyone around us miserable were thrown away."

Damn this is a tough but important read. The residential schools always show up in the books I've read by Native authors because they affect survivors today, but I've never read a story specifically focused on the survivors in the time when they were still running. Horrible, atrocious, debilitating violence inflicted on CHILDREN. FOR DECADES. And they called it civilization.

Otterbourne is in Jerusalem complaining about it and me di cuenta que this book was written in 1937 so it was still PALESTINE. Then me di cuenta otra vez que Otterbourne is one of the English colonizers of Palestine that sucked so bad for years. Damn.

I'm powering through this because I genuinely want to improve these areas, but all I can think so far is how this male author probably has lots of extra time for this stuff because he's got unpaid labor in the form of a wife. You too can spend hours doing memory exercises as long as you have someone taking care of you for free. Sigh.

Oh the childhood trauma. Chapter 3: "The Orphanage" is just unending misery and pain layered on top of each other. You can really feel just how heavy that is for a child, when she says it broke her you finally understand that phrase in a way you hadn't before. I want to go back and hug baby Leverne.

"People who can eat people are the luckiest people in the world." Vonnegut is so silly.

Not only is this a great collection of essays, it's a resource for other great works by Black women authors. Hell yeah.

I started this once, and didn't get very far. The first chapter isn't as gripping right from the get-go as her other later work is, but it picks up and now I'm into it. I should have never doubted Barbara Kingsolver, one of my very favorite authors. Silly me.

Now I'm rereading books in Spanish that I've always meant to reread anyway, and this one is great!

I already love this writer and this vulnerability on full display is really powerful. Also I enjoy learning about her life because so much of it shows up in her characters. The novels aren't autobiographical necessarily, but there's always a lot of an author in their work. Learning about them then and seeing those connections is a beautiful thing. LOVE Hala Alyan.

Holy shit did I know that Alberta Williams King was murdered in her own church? No I did not. I also don't think I really knew that her other son Alfred Daniel died tragically young as well, just about a year after Martin Jr was assassinated. Unimaginable tragedy just kept coming for the Kings.

I really want to just finish this because I don't want to stop but I also never want it to end. So I am forcing myself to pace myself. Hala Alyan is a hell of a storyteller.

So much unknown (to me) vocabulary! This is why I always got stuck in the first chapter, as I also insisted in stopping and writing it all down.

Wow, that chapter was a doozy. I couldn't stop so I didn't. "The Road to Damascus."

Loving this so far!

Hold on, Viagra relieves period pain? But any research or testing won't be funded because men can't believe in the concept just because they don't experience it themselves? Fuck that shit.

"What problem were NASA scientists solving when they decided to give Valerie, their space-navigation robot, breasts?" 😅

Oh god this is just so GOOD! Long sweeping family dramas over decades told from multiple perspectives - yes please! I love this family, this story.

"The men (and it would have been men) who originally devised the schedule knew how they traveled and they designed around their needs. They didn't deliberately set out to exclude women. They just didn't think about them. They didn't think to consider if women's needs might be different." I sense a pattern beginning....

I am totally sucked into this story/stories. I'm unemployed so I get to read as much as I want.

Qué barbaridad de los soldados. Se me olvidó lo brutales que fueron a los ciudadanos inocentes.

"I wanted to comfort the afflicted, but more than that, I wanted to afflict the comfortable"

Wild how Carter's reputation and legacy was so overrated, he didn't do shit for the people he promised to help. Even I forgot all his terrible policies and how he maintained the status quo for the rich. No American president has ever been good.

My god, how much time and effort went into creating this anthology. The editor's notes show the reality of creating art during a genocide, the delays because of no Internet, having to bury and mourn a loved one, being displaced yet again, all the while trying to survive the nearly constant bombardment and destruction. I am ready to be undone by these stories.

Gutting. I'm absolutely bereft. Palestinians have been through so much and IT CONTINUES TODAY. Reading about the 1967 war & the Sabra & Shatilah Massacre in 1982.... and look at what's happening now. This fictional family has been subjected to terror and devastation and it really helps you feel the pain and rage that everyone should feel.

Wow, this first chapter makes me want to piss on andrew johnson's grave.

I wanted to read this again but only the Spanish language version is available so I'm trying. It's tough reading in a second language but I find myself wanting to keep going. Plus I already know the story.