debra L > Recent Status Updates

“If we’re only relying on written history, what stories do we miss?” our Yemenite protagonist, Zohara, asks her Ashky husband, Zack. “What happens to the stories of people who were illiterate? To marginalized communities?” Zohara has important questions. She wants to know “whose stories are written in history books? And who decides which stories to include?”

stopping for now

...for him, fear was an uninvited guest, definitely not a permanent resident. His eyes told her that... Frightened people do not look directly at others, to keep from arousing disapproval or rebuke. Frightened people lower their eyes, blink, do not dare to demand a bit of someone else's face with their glance...

"Hunters tracking a huntress?" Nina reached across the table, hooking what would be her trigger finger through his trigger finger. "I like our odds." p317

Discussing journal writing:
"I was also overcome by shame--ashamed that my marriage had failed, ashamed that I had failed--and so I did not want to be writing, but rather erasing this chapter of my life. Can a get be written on a page covered with erasures? the rabbis ask. It seems to me a silly question. All divorce is written on top of erasure.... " pg 145

"And so aware that I could not predict the future, I resolved that I would instead pray that one day, when I read the story of my life backward, this chapter would have a happy ending." (p78)

loving this book; just no time to myself this past 10 days....

Finding this a little difficult to read - only for the sheer ugliness of Nazi behavior. Though I've certainly encountered it many times through so much of holocaust and WWII literature. It still makes me want to stop reading....