Lynzo > Recent Status Updates

I am hooked, this is way above my head in terms of what I normally read. This seems like something I'd have read in a PoliSci class had it been written before I graduated in 2005. Because it's not just Palestine, but all hegemonic forms of international law application. Justice for some. This is going to take me a long time to get through but I'm invested. Noura Erakat is smart as hell so I'm learning a lot.

She details her imprisonment at 16 after slapping a soldier, humiliating and infuriating the occupation. They have devised every method of torture and humiliation and the reasons for imprisonment are often flimsy. Fuck israhell, tear it all down and free Palestine.

Man, I can't say this enough: FUCK ISRAEL. DOWN WITH THE VIOLENT APARTHEID STATE OF ISRAEL, WHICH HAS *NO* RIGHT TO EXIST. Fuck them unequivocally and forever. Fuck Zionism and its proponents, fuck colonizers and genocidal barbarians who act like they have any moral authority over anything. FUCK ISRAEL.

I'm not surprised and therefore shouldn't be disappointed that the Monty Python dudes were horrible dicks to any woman who dared to be funny. "Studied cruelty" she calls it. Damn them.

I LOVE BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Go, Miriam! She writes with fondness of visiting a kibbutz when she was younger. And bookending the description is her own advisory statement about having learned since then how destructive zionism is, how Palestine has been wronged in the whole project from the beginning. Learning and doing better is so important!

Bloody hell, okay the thing happened and at least I didn't miss anything when I skipped it lol. But Luke is a POS as well, like WTF. Good for Meggie, she should have left long ago.

Okay so Ralph is a pedophile PRIEST grooming Meggie, yes? "Better than staying in Gilly to watch her change into a creature he didn't want." You mean, from a child to a woman? TF? Is this the great romance of the book? BARF.

"Instead, the United States puts its thumb on the scales in favor of the stronger party. In this surreal, upside-down vision of the world, it almost seems as it if it is the Israelis who are occupied by the Palestinians, and not the other way around. In this skewed universe, the inmates of an open-air prison are besieging a nuclear-armed power with one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world."

I've held off on picking this up because the grief feels too fresh. I just finished the intro and I'm already crying, but in a good way I guess? What a sweet funny man, Leslie Jordan. I just saw a random reel of younger Leslie dressed as Pee-wee on Pee-wee's Playhouse and it made me smile. I'm as ready as I'll ever be but reserve the right to bail.

"israeli immunity from criticism and consequences along with the political and financial support it unconditionally receives from the West (and even from Arab countries) are the reasons it feels safe to continue to murder Palestinians."

So glad the tide is FINALLY changing, has been for a while now. But they continue their assault on civilians and humanity.

"Knowledge is [isnotreal]'s worst enemy. Awareness is [its] most hated and feared foe. That's why [it] bombs a university; it wants to kill openness and determination to refuse living under Injustice and racism." Refaat Alareer, 2014

"Likewise, Refaat no murió, se multiplicó!" 😭😭😭😭😭

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."