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karnaconverse's reviews
371 reviews
True Biz by Sara Nović
Informative and moving story—with teenagers as the main characters—about Deaf culture that touches on a variety of debates including that of school immersion, cochlear implants, cultural differences between ASL and BASL*, and the dynamics within CODA* families AND that also weaves in a historical and a present-day look at ASL and the medical community.
This book does a lot: the story is engaging, the format creative, and at the end of the book, Novic issues a call to action that includes resources for learning ASL and a sobering list of 24 state Deaf campuses that have closed. I was especially taken with her overriding reason for writing:
Deaf and disabled advocates work tirelessly to raise awareness and push back against ableist systems, policies, and cultural norms. But when it comes down to it, there are far more hearing people in the world than there are deaf ones. And their behaviors, needs, and wants dictate what society considers “normal.” Over ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, and only eight percent of those parents ever learn enough ASL to hold a conversation with their child. . . . the hearing world is right now, and often unwittingly, deciding whether Deaf culture and sign language will continue to exist. . . . It is my hope that the characters of True Biz have made a different kind of case for us: that we deserve to exist because we are equally human. Like you we laugh, cry, bleed, have sex, raise families, make mistakes, feel love. There is nothing more universally human than the desire to be understood, and through that, maybe the hearing world will see what we all share and embrace deafness as just one more aspect of what makes us as people interesting, diverse, and strong.
*American Sign Language - Black American Sign Language - Child of Deaf Adults
This book does a lot: the story is engaging, the format creative, and at the end of the book, Novic issues a call to action that includes resources for learning ASL and a sobering list of 24 state Deaf campuses that have closed. I was especially taken with her overriding reason for writing:
Deaf and disabled advocates work tirelessly to raise awareness and push back against ableist systems, policies, and cultural norms. But when it comes down to it, there are far more hearing people in the world than there are deaf ones. And their behaviors, needs, and wants dictate what society considers “normal.” Over ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, and only eight percent of those parents ever learn enough ASL to hold a conversation with their child. . . . the hearing world is right now, and often unwittingly, deciding whether Deaf culture and sign language will continue to exist. . . . It is my hope that the characters of True Biz have made a different kind of case for us: that we deserve to exist because we are equally human. Like you we laugh, cry, bleed, have sex, raise families, make mistakes, feel love. There is nothing more universally human than the desire to be understood, and through that, maybe the hearing world will see what we all share and embrace deafness as just one more aspect of what makes us as people interesting, diverse, and strong.
*American Sign Language - Black American Sign Language - Child of Deaf Adults
Jesus the Refugee: Ancient Injustice and Modern Solidarity by D. Glenn Butner
Asks: Why would one try to enter another country illegally?
. . . and answers by applying present-day immigration laws regarding refugees and asylees—as grounded in the 1951 Refugee Convention, UNHCR's* key legal document—to the Biblical story of Mary and Joseph's flight to Egypt.
Butner's academic-leaning study offers a detailed look at determining whether or not Mary and Joseph would qualify as refugees—through the lens of Christian ethics and with much discussion about changing geographical boundaries, patterns of migration, internally-displaced persons, and government-sponsored labor recruitment.
"To determine whether Mary and Joseph are refugees in the imagined scenario of this book, we must consider four points: (1) whether they had a well-founded fear of persecution; (2) whether this fear met the reasons designated in article 1 of the 1951 Refugee Convention; (3) whether they were outside of the country of their nationality; and (4) whether they were unable or unwilling to find protection in their home country for fear of this persecution."
In considering each of these points, Butner toggles between an historical overview of the Roman Empire and a more-recent historical look at the passage and implementation of the United States's 1980 Refugee Act. He highlights, especially, U.S. policies regarding Haitian refugees dating back to the 1970s. Overall, his discussion is sobering—noting that "eighty-two million displaced persons are currently in the world . . . only 2 percent of refugees find homes each year through resettlement or repatriation" . . . "collectively, the world’s nation-states resettle only 1 percent of the refugee population each year. Only 29 countries of 149 refugee convention signatories provided refugee resettlement in 2019." But he ends a bit more positively by outlining a call to action: "The Bible calls us to a general solidarity with strangers."
Read for a discussion at church.
*Office of the High Commissioner for Refugee
Butcher by Joyce Carol Oates
Masterful story about women's healthcare in the mid- to late 1800s
Oates is a master and this fictionalized story about the Father of Gyno-Psychiatry is brillant, illuminating—and horrific. She shows readers how little education doctors of this time period had, none of which was dedicated to female anatomy and "privates," and more especially, how surgical experiments were conducted on the poor with no regard to their lives having been told:
“You are not guilty—a physician is never ‘guilty.’ Wretches come to us for help, & we provide what help we can, with God’s grace; if God does not behave charitably with His grace, that is hardly our fault. We do what we can, more than that we cannot do. You were trying to help an indigent family. Like a good Christian, you were volunteering your time. You were attempting ‘good works.’"
Doctor Silas Alaysius Weir wants fame and fortune but is struggling to make a living. In 1839, one of his first patients died while in his care and he was exiled to rural New Jersey where he is summoned to treat the indentured servants of wealthy cotton mill owner Elijah Rosencrantz. A few years later, he is called to New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics and given the task of determining why so many were committing suicide and to determine if the medical crisis is a cause, or result, of mental illness. The cause, he determines, is related to childbirth, and he dedicates his life to discovering a cure for fistula, which he describes as "the perforation in the urinary tract of the female, leading to chronic & continuous incontinence."
Oates could have written this story as a straight-forward narrative and successfully incorporated the Victorian and Christian attitudes of the time into this origin story of gynecological medicine. Instead, she sets the story in the form of a biography, published ten years after Weir's death and edited by his son. Jonathan hopes to show that his father "seemed to have been convinced that whatever he did, Providence was guiding his hand. The smallest tasks, Father believed to be essential to his destiny; what those of us of a younger generation would likely attribute to mere chance, if not the whimsicality of fate, Father interpreted as the will of God."
The story may be fiction but Oates notes that Silas Aloysius Weir is a composite character based on three men who in the late 1800s were known as the Father of Modern Gynecology, the Father of Medical Neurology, and the director of the New Jersey Lunatic Asylum. Readers are sure to want to google these men and may well then be sickened by how much fact is woven into Butcher.
2024 Des Moines LIbrary Challenge: Read a book by an AVID (Authors Visiting In Des Moines) author.
Oates is a master and this fictionalized story about the Father of Gyno-Psychiatry is brillant, illuminating—and horrific. She shows readers how little education doctors of this time period had, none of which was dedicated to female anatomy and "privates," and more especially, how surgical experiments were conducted on the poor with no regard to their lives having been told:
“You are not guilty—a physician is never ‘guilty.’ Wretches come to us for help, & we provide what help we can, with God’s grace; if God does not behave charitably with His grace, that is hardly our fault. We do what we can, more than that we cannot do. You were trying to help an indigent family. Like a good Christian, you were volunteering your time. You were attempting ‘good works.’"
Doctor Silas Alaysius Weir wants fame and fortune but is struggling to make a living. In 1839, one of his first patients died while in his care and he was exiled to rural New Jersey where he is summoned to treat the indentured servants of wealthy cotton mill owner Elijah Rosencrantz. A few years later, he is called to New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics and given the task of determining why so many were committing suicide and to determine if the medical crisis is a cause, or result, of mental illness. The cause, he determines, is related to childbirth, and he dedicates his life to discovering a cure for fistula, which he describes as "the perforation in the urinary tract of the female, leading to chronic & continuous incontinence."
Oates could have written this story as a straight-forward narrative and successfully incorporated the Victorian and Christian attitudes of the time into this origin story of gynecological medicine. Instead, she sets the story in the form of a biography, published ten years after Weir's death and edited by his son. Jonathan hopes to show that his father "seemed to have been convinced that whatever he did, Providence was guiding his hand. The smallest tasks, Father believed to be essential to his destiny; what those of us of a younger generation would likely attribute to mere chance, if not the whimsicality of fate, Father interpreted as the will of God."
The story may be fiction but Oates notes that Silas Aloysius Weir is a composite character based on three men who in the late 1800s were known as the Father of Modern Gynecology, the Father of Medical Neurology, and the director of the New Jersey Lunatic Asylum. Readers are sure to want to google these men and may well then be sickened by how much fact is woven into Butcher.
2024 Des Moines LIbrary Challenge: Read a book by an AVID (Authors Visiting In Des Moines) author.
The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki
Easy-to-read sweeping life story of a woman who had more money than she knew what to do with
Pataki reveals how the sole heir of the Postum Cereal Company truly lived a number of different lives—from a childhood of poverty and illness to business magnate to socialite and philanthropist. Each of the four parts of this novel are written in the first person and align roughly with her four marriages. Post was born in the late 1880s; came of age and inherited the family business in the mid-1910s; steered the company through the Depression and two World Wars; and entertained her way into social circles that stretched from Upstate New York to New York City to Washington D.C. to Moscow, Soviet Union and Palm Beach, Florida until her death in 1973. Pataki leaves no doubt that Post led an extravagant life yet rolled up her sleeve to share and put her wealth to work.
I read this after watching Unfrosted, a comedy based loosely on the rivalry between Post and Kellogg's development of Country Squares and Pop-Tarts—and while Pataki notes the two companies' competing interests and Post's market growth (and in particular, the acquisition of Bird's Eye frozen foods shortly after WWI), she includes very few details or context about any decisions she was involved with. Much space, however, is given to the year— 1937-1938—when she accompanied her husband to the Soviet Union and her efforts decorating, entertaining, and collecting art (much of which is on display at her Hillwood Estate, Museum and Garden in Washington D.C.) and the funding of a hospital in France during WWII.
2024 Omaha Library Challenge: Read a book by, about, or featuring a 20th century icon.
Pataki reveals how the sole heir of the Postum Cereal Company truly lived a number of different lives—from a childhood of poverty and illness to business magnate to socialite and philanthropist. Each of the four parts of this novel are written in the first person and align roughly with her four marriages. Post was born in the late 1880s; came of age and inherited the family business in the mid-1910s; steered the company through the Depression and two World Wars; and entertained her way into social circles that stretched from Upstate New York to New York City to Washington D.C. to Moscow, Soviet Union and Palm Beach, Florida until her death in 1973. Pataki leaves no doubt that Post led an extravagant life yet rolled up her sleeve to share and put her wealth to work.
I read this after watching Unfrosted, a comedy based loosely on the rivalry between Post and Kellogg's development of Country Squares and Pop-Tarts—and while Pataki notes the two companies' competing interests and Post's market growth (and in particular, the acquisition of Bird's Eye frozen foods shortly after WWI), she includes very few details or context about any decisions she was involved with. Much space, however, is given to the year— 1937-1938—when she accompanied her husband to the Soviet Union and her efforts decorating, entertaining, and collecting art (much of which is on display at her Hillwood Estate, Museum and Garden in Washington D.C.) and the funding of a hospital in France during WWII.
2024 Omaha Library Challenge: Read a book by, about, or featuring a 20th century icon.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Encourages readers to answer a single question: do we believe that the right to a decent
home is part of what it means to be an American?
Even though this award-winning book was published in 2016 and based on research conducted in 2008, Desmond's stories about the people he interviewed, accompanied around the neighborhood, and lived with reveal how much an individual's or family's survival depends on having a place they can call home. Within each individual's story, he deftly weaves in social issues of affordable and safe housing, addiction, mental illness, education and job preparedness, foster care, poverty, governmental benefits, and race. It quickly becomes obvious that one issue begets another and another and another.
The author's website turns the narrative into a call for action, with four study guides available for discussion and with opportunities to dig deeper. This question, from the faith-based guide emphasizes the local community: "There seems to be a connected community of people that benefit from evictions as well: the moving companies, the landlords, and the management company at the trailer park. Do they have any spiritual responsibility to the people in the neighborhoods where they work, or are they simply supporting their livelihood?" and this question--"What is the best way to address the affordable housing crisis: through government policies, market mechanisms, church initiatives, or something else?"--shows just how wide-ranging the conversation needs to be.
2024 Des Moines Library: series of discussions about poverty in Iowa
2024 Omaha Library Challenge: Read a book about social justice.
home is part of what it means to be an American?
Even though this award-winning book was published in 2016 and based on research conducted in 2008, Desmond's stories about the people he interviewed, accompanied around the neighborhood, and lived with reveal how much an individual's or family's survival depends on having a place they can call home. Within each individual's story, he deftly weaves in social issues of affordable and safe housing, addiction, mental illness, education and job preparedness, foster care, poverty, governmental benefits, and race. It quickly becomes obvious that one issue begets another and another and another.
The author's website turns the narrative into a call for action, with four study guides available for discussion and with opportunities to dig deeper. This question, from the faith-based guide emphasizes the local community: "There seems to be a connected community of people that benefit from evictions as well: the moving companies, the landlords, and the management company at the trailer park. Do they have any spiritual responsibility to the people in the neighborhoods where they work, or are they simply supporting their livelihood?" and this question--"What is the best way to address the affordable housing crisis: through government policies, market mechanisms, church initiatives, or something else?"--shows just how wide-ranging the conversation needs to be.
2024 Des Moines Library: series of discussions about poverty in Iowa
2024 Omaha Library Challenge: Read a book about social justice.
A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline
Andrew Wyeth spent his summers from 1939 to 1948 in Cushing, Maine working on what would become his most famous painting. This novel is a fictionalized portrayal of the artist and his subject, the melancholy that drew them together, and how the Olson House became "Christina's World."
Kline's interpretation reflects a monotony of rural life which, at times, was boring and hard for me to continue reading—even though I know that monotony to be accurate and true. The Prologue however is beautiful and introduces Christina Olson as one who accepts the life she's been given yet yearns for much more:
<blockquote>"He did get one thing right: Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me. (There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.) My ancestors fled to Maine from Salem, but like anyone who tries to run away from the past, they brought it with them. Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can carry in its bones the marrow of all that came before."</blockquote>
Kline's interpretation reflects a monotony of rural life which, at times, was boring and hard for me to continue reading—even though I know that monotony to be accurate and true. The Prologue however is beautiful and introduces Christina Olson as one who accepts the life she's been given yet yearns for much more:
<blockquote>"He did get one thing right: Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me. (There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.) My ancestors fled to Maine from Salem, but like anyone who tries to run away from the past, they brought it with them. Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can carry in its bones the marrow of all that came before."</blockquote>
The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez
As one character says to another: "If a story is never told, where does it go?"
Alma Cruz is a published writer and educator who, recognizing her advancing age and a family history of dementia, begins the task of sorting through boxes and boxes of unfinished manuscripts but two of her "failed stories" won't let her go. When her father passes away and she inherits some land in their Dominican Republic homeland, she decides those few acres will be their final resting place. And while those stories refused to be told when Alma first tried writing them, they come alive in the cemetery—the characters tell their stories to Filomena, the groundskeeper Alma hires to maintain the property.
Alvarez weaves together four stories in this beautiful novel: 1) of Alma and her family, 2) of Alma's father, Manuel and the stories he never told, 3) of Filomena and her family, and 4) of Bienvenida, ex-wife of DR dictator Trujillo and Alma's lifelong project. Each character struggles with their own questions of what is story, who should tell it, and how it should be told—questions worthy of consideration by all of us, not just the writers. Here are some of those passages:
"I confess that at first, I was disappointed she didn’t write that book about me she was always saying she would. But in the end, I agreed with her mother, did I really want our private lives put out there for the world to see and judge? Another form of death, isn’t it, to be remade in someone else’s image?"
"Una masa de pan. Bread dough, people always said that about me. Docile, taking the imprint of any hand kneading it. That’s been the story handed down. Who was there to correct them since I never spoke up? What difference would it have made? Who would have listened?"
". . . the gates will be opened to everyone—no matter what story they tell. All stories are good stories if you find the right listener."
2024 Des Moines Library Challenge: Read a book with a place in the title.
Alma Cruz is a published writer and educator who, recognizing her advancing age and a family history of dementia, begins the task of sorting through boxes and boxes of unfinished manuscripts but two of her "failed stories" won't let her go. When her father passes away and she inherits some land in their Dominican Republic homeland, she decides those few acres will be their final resting place. And while those stories refused to be told when Alma first tried writing them, they come alive in the cemetery—the characters tell their stories to Filomena, the groundskeeper Alma hires to maintain the property.
Alvarez weaves together four stories in this beautiful novel: 1) of Alma and her family, 2) of Alma's father, Manuel and the stories he never told, 3) of Filomena and her family, and 4) of Bienvenida, ex-wife of DR dictator Trujillo and Alma's lifelong project. Each character struggles with their own questions of what is story, who should tell it, and how it should be told—questions worthy of consideration by all of us, not just the writers. Here are some of those passages:
"I confess that at first, I was disappointed she didn’t write that book about me she was always saying she would. But in the end, I agreed with her mother, did I really want our private lives put out there for the world to see and judge? Another form of death, isn’t it, to be remade in someone else’s image?"
"Una masa de pan. Bread dough, people always said that about me. Docile, taking the imprint of any hand kneading it. That’s been the story handed down. Who was there to correct them since I never spoke up? What difference would it have made? Who would have listened?"
". . . the gates will be opened to everyone—no matter what story they tell. All stories are good stories if you find the right listener."
2024 Des Moines Library Challenge: Read a book with a place in the title.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Science fiction with a strong message about how people with disabilities—in this case, of low intelligence—are sometimes viewed and with a thought-provoking emphasis that showcases I.Q. against emotional intelligence. A must-read with a footnote that this multi-award winner was one of the most challenged books in the 1990s.
2024 Omaha Library Challenge: Read a book by, about, or featuring a person with a disability.
2024 Omaha Library Challenge: Read a book by, about, or featuring a person with a disability.
Solito by Javier Zamora
First-hand account of a young boy's journey from El Salvador to the United States that reveals the work of coyotes, the helplessness of leaving family, and the helping hands of other migrants who are also making the journey.
Nine-year-old Javier made this seven-week journey in 1999; neither his family in El Salvador nor his parents in the United States had any knowledge of where he was during that time. Zamora's details are vivid, specific, and full of appreciation for the adults who cared for him as if he was their own. The coyotes give the migrants water; food; Mexican names and birthplaces; lyrics to the Mexican national anthem; and names of soccer teams and the president. Others include him in their family.
Zamora notes in a 2022 interview with The Guardian that "The chances of me surviving now would have been slim. In 1999, the coyotes, or human smugglers, genuinely thought they were helping people. Now, in order to smuggle human beings across the border, you have to be part of a cartel. And that has changed everything. There have been multiple cases where people pay the cartels and all the cartel does is throw people over the fence. On top of that, the border has become hugely militarised."
I was especially taken with Zamora's recollection about the landscape: "The landscape looks the exact same everywhere. I can’t tell we’re leaving México. ¿Where are the cities? ¿Where are the signs saying we’re in a new country? This is my third new country: Guate, México, La USA. The air feels different. Colder. But it might just be the night." and "I can never tell whether I’m in La USA or México—the same bushes, the same Lonelies and occasional Fuzzy. Instead of trees, more rocks and a new bush that looks like a tequila plant, except it’s smaller and its leaves aren’t as fat or long."
Thinking about immigration through the eyes of a child is important and Zamora's story emphasizes why family is a driving factor.
Nine-year-old Javier made this seven-week journey in 1999; neither his family in El Salvador nor his parents in the United States had any knowledge of where he was during that time. Zamora's details are vivid, specific, and full of appreciation for the adults who cared for him as if he was their own. The coyotes give the migrants water; food; Mexican names and birthplaces; lyrics to the Mexican national anthem; and names of soccer teams and the president. Others include him in their family.
Zamora notes in a 2022 interview with The Guardian that "The chances of me surviving now would have been slim. In 1999, the coyotes, or human smugglers, genuinely thought they were helping people. Now, in order to smuggle human beings across the border, you have to be part of a cartel. And that has changed everything. There have been multiple cases where people pay the cartels and all the cartel does is throw people over the fence. On top of that, the border has become hugely militarised."
I was especially taken with Zamora's recollection about the landscape: "The landscape looks the exact same everywhere. I can’t tell we’re leaving México. ¿Where are the cities? ¿Where are the signs saying we’re in a new country? This is my third new country: Guate, México, La USA. The air feels different. Colder. But it might just be the night." and "I can never tell whether I’m in La USA or México—the same bushes, the same Lonelies and occasional Fuzzy. Instead of trees, more rocks and a new bush that looks like a tequila plant, except it’s smaller and its leaves aren’t as fat or long."
Thinking about immigration through the eyes of a child is important and Zamora's story emphasizes why family is a driving factor.
Africa Is Not A Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin
Can most easily be described by this statement in the Author's Note: "I'm not genetically African. I am Nigerian. This book reflects my viewpoint as such."
Faloyin writes about a wide-ranging group of topics to challenge those who refer to Africa as a single entity when it is actually a continent of 54 countries, each with individual histories, challenges, and futures. His clever—and sometimes sarcastic—essays encourage readers to consider the implications of colonization in the 1880s, the looting of artifacts, and the dictatorships that arose out of independence; of worldwide musical fundraising events of the 1980s; and of popular movies from the 1950s to today (including 50 remakes of Tarzan since 1912 and the social media-driven campaign behind Kony 2012). He ends with a chapter titled "What's Next?" that highlights youth-driven activities currently occurring throughout the continent that celebrate the future.
This thought-provoking, easy-to-understand book would make a great selection for a book club discussion.
2024 Des Moines Library Challenge: Book about a topic you don't know much about.
Faloyin writes about a wide-ranging group of topics to challenge those who refer to Africa as a single entity when it is actually a continent of 54 countries, each with individual histories, challenges, and futures. His clever—and sometimes sarcastic—essays encourage readers to consider the implications of colonization in the 1880s, the looting of artifacts, and the dictatorships that arose out of independence; of worldwide musical fundraising events of the 1980s; and of popular movies from the 1950s to today (including 50 remakes of Tarzan since 1912 and the social media-driven campaign behind Kony 2012). He ends with a chapter titled "What's Next?" that highlights youth-driven activities currently occurring throughout the continent that celebrate the future.
This thought-provoking, easy-to-understand book would make a great selection for a book club discussion.
2024 Des Moines Library Challenge: Book about a topic you don't know much about.