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rowena

Rowena's Reviews

My true loves: Wilkie Collins, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anais Nin, George Eliot, James Joyce, James Baldwin, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, bell hooks, Chinua Achebe, Langston Hughes, William Shakespeare... I'm falling for : Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Albert Camus, Margaret Atwood, Somerset Maugham, Junot Diaz, A.S. Byatt... And the lists continue to grow! I will read almost anything, as long as it's well-written. I always love to expand my reading horizons.

Currently reading

Orientalism
Edward W. Said
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Finnegans Wake (Trade Paperback)
James Joyce
The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim “All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented across her face. It was wistaria. Wistaria and sunshine.”

This was a lovely book about four English women who answer an advertisement to rent an Italian chateau in San Salvatore,Italy during a dismal April in England. The advertisement seems to be a godsend to these women, whose lives are not going the way they had hoped. As the title word “enchanted” implies, the story does have a slight fairytale-like aura to it, but not annoyingly so.

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book so much, on the outset it looked like it would be an extremely slow read. However, it turned out to be very enjoyable. Elizabeth Von Armin is a masterful storyteller. Her writing is beautiful and witty. Also, for a floraphile such as myself, her descriptions of flowers were heavenly:

“The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour.”

Additionally, as a person whose life has been changed by travel, I think this book is a great advertisement for travelling to renew your soul and learn more about yourself and others.

My first Von Armin and it definitely won’t be my last. Highly recommended.
The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption: 1 - Taona Dumisani Chiveneko I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. What attracted me the most to this book was the fact that it was set in Zimbabwe ; I'd never read a book written by a Zimbabwean author before, a part of the world that I am very familiar with.

The content of the book probably isn't what one would characteristically associate with Africa , which adds to its appeal. At first we meet Abel Muranda, a man from rural Zimbabwe, who walks from his village (three weeks of travel) to the Zimbabwean capital of Harare in order to interview for the country's hangman (!!!) position. Abel is a simple, likeable man who somehow gets trapped in a web of intrigue. People who meet Abel also note that he “...is quite intelligent for an uneducated peasant. Articulate, even. He speaks in the Shona of five generations ago. Wise, reflective, prone to using the most unexpected words. His outdated version of the language reflects values that may be misplaced in modern times, but still, the man himself is interesting.”

Abel is the first of many fascinating idiosyncratic characters we meet. For me one of the best things about this book were all the kooky characters. There were several of them and all were great and funny in their own way. The storyline is also pretty fascinating, dealing with carnivorous plants, genetic engineering, organ trafficking among other topics.

Chiveneko is a great storyteller and so many parts of this book made me laugh out loud.The tone is very witty and the writing is erudite. Additionally, the book contains some home truths that made me ponder. For example, regarding journalism and the media: “Journalists wrote for the mass market. However, they tended to suffer from a critical flaw. Readers wanted the world explained in simplistic terms. Villains and heroes had to be clearly defined.”

And also, “The media had the potential to become the frontline in the battle against ignorance. Unfortunately, most readers devoted too much of their intellectual capacity to frivolity.”

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for a unique, witty and entertaining read.
Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf - Oliver Sacks “We are remarkably ignorant about deafness…Ignorant and indifferent.” I would definitely agree that I was relatively ignorant about deafness, probably because I didn’t know any deaf people until some months ago. Making the acquaintance of a young deaf man made me really curious about deaf people in general. This book taught me so much, it was truly enlightening.I think it should be read by everyone. Some of the stories about the deaf population's struggle for acceptance were very powerful and poignant, and I was embarrassed that I had been so unaware of their struggles.

A great quote:

“And to be defective in language, for a human being, is one of the most desperate of calamities, for it is only through language that we enter fully into our human estate and culture, communicate freely with our fellows, acquire and share information. If we cannot do this, we will be bizarrely disabled and cut off- whatever our desires or endeavours, or native capacities.”




Remarkable Baobab - Thomas Pakenham “I laid aside all thoughts of sports, as soon as I perceived a tree of prodigious thickness, which drew my whole attention.” – Michel Adanson

I’ve been quite obsessed with the baobab tree for a long time. I first came across its mention in The Little Prince as a youngster, and while on vacation in Africa I encountered one for the first time. It’s a truly wonderful tree.

This book was more of a coffee table book. The pictures were absolutely beautiful and looked quite unreal; they were of baobab trees from all over Africa.

There is some basic information about the tree, for example it’s godly status in some cultures, its diverse uses (shelter, food, clothing), and some history about European travellers who saw it.

It was a quick, informative read but I was slightly disappointed by the fact that the book did not contain some of the myths of the baobab tree, some of which I’ve heard relatives say over the years, nor did it go into enough detail about how important the tree is to the African people.
One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization) - Eudora Welty I knew absolutely nothing about Eudora Welty when I picked up this book. I quite enjoyed her simple retelling of her past, and how she realized she wanted to be a writer. A quick, interesting read.
African Voices: An Introduction to the Languages and Linguistics of Africa - Vic Webb
Language is strongly tied into identity, especially in Africa. Despite having 53 countries, Africa is home to at least 2,000 languages, so contrary to popular belief, there is no language called "African"!

This is an introductory textbook for African linguistics and, judging from the group discussion questions in the back of each chapter, it is probably more suited for African linguistics students living in Africa. Even so, I got a lot out of it and it’s definitely a must for those interested in African languages.

I skipped 2 chapters on phonetic characteristics of language. I was more interested in the functions of language in society and how languages have evolved.I learned about the linguistic groups in Africa, I was surprised that there were only 4:

Afro-Asiatic
Nilo-Saharan
Niger-Congo (Bantu)<--- my linguistic group<br/>Khoisan


I learned that language is a complex and highly political issue in Africa, made worse by colonialists drawing up arbitrary lines between countries, thus dividing people from different tribes trans-borderly

The book also goes into the ethnic revival of languages, some pidgins that were formed when people of different tribes came to work together, the popularity and the prestige of European languages in the area.

Despite already knowing that there are a lot of languages spoken in Africa, this book opened up my eyes even more so to the issues.

The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette Movement and the Ideas Behind It - Melanie Phillips I learned a lot from this book. The struggles that the female suffragettes went through were formidable, and it’s quite reminiscent of the current global climate where women are still fighting for their rights. Truly, I wonder why so many people are complacent about voting when it wasn’t so long ago that women and blacks weren’t even allowed to vote.

With that being said, I was quite surprised by the number of women who displayed misogynistic tendencies themselves. I was also appalled by the anti-woman sentiments at that time. Rousseau (1762) shocked me with this line: "The woman is made specially to please the man.” A lot of people actually believed that learning in a woman was “unpleasing and unnecessary.” I would have laughed if it hadn’t been so tragic.

I did like the core message of the book which was “the only way to emancipate women was to end female dependency.”

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys Probably contains some spoilers

“Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest trees, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root.”

I was curious to read this book as it was considered a sort of prequel to Jane Eyre. So I guess this counts as fanfiction? At least it’s very well-written fan fiction!

The writing style is of course different from Jane Eyre. The depictions of the Caribbean are beautiful. It’s a relatively short book and it tells the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Antoinette Cosway, whom he met in Jamaica. The themes explored in the book are very postcolonialism (discusses the relationships between former slaves and slaveowners after Emancipation), identity (Antoinette is Creole and is therefore not accepted by either the blacks or the whites) and madness.

I’ve just finished reading a book about the Suffragette movement that looked into historical accounts of insanity in women. I had no idea that the word "hysteria" was first used to describe a supposed mental ailment that women suffered from all because they had a uterus. *sigh* Apart from being frustrated by that piece of pseudoscience, what's also frustrating is the fact that historically a lot of people were unaware that the environment one lives in can make one "crazy." Women in particular, who were often reliant on men and didn’t have their own freedom were obviously more likely to suffer from nervous breakdowns.

I’m pretty sure most readers will change their opinion of Rochester after they read this. I will definitely see him in a less than favourable light when I do re-read Jane Eyre.

I am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings - Audre Lorde, Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Beverly Guy-Sheftall My introduction to Audre Lorde and I enjoyed her essays very much. I sensed a lot of compassion in her words, as well as her desire for understanding and her wish for collaboration and dialogue between people who may feel they have nothing to learn from each other due to their differences. The following quotes in particular touched me:

"We do not need to become each other in order to work together."

" I am constantly defining my selves, for I am, as we all are, made up of so many different parts."

"I feel, and stake my life and my living upon it, that we become strong by doing whatever it is we need to be strong for."
Green Grass, Running Water - Thomas King This was a bookclub read and one that I didn't get into until maybe 100 pages in. In the end I quite liked it. I don't really read too much Canadian fiction, something I'm trying to remedy, and it's nice to be able to read a book which discusses places I'm familiar with. And with the Idle No More movement that is taking place in North America right now, it was definitely a good time to read this book. Native Canadian and American awareness is definitely needed.

This book introduces truly memorable characters and satirizes how non-Natives perceive Natives.Of course the obligatory Native trickster is included, as well as Native mythology of the creation of the world.

I have to admit that I only gave the book 4-stars after my bookclub friends explained some of the Native and literature symbolism to me. When I realized what King was trying to do the book became more interesting to me. I will probably have to re-read this one in the future.
What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction - Toni Morrison Toni Morrison is a writer I greatly admire but one who drives me mad because of the complex motifs and symbolism in her writing.I do find her writing, as elegant and beautiful as it is, challenging at times (Paradise is one of those Morrison books I struggled through).

I picked up this book of essays on a whim and I was glad that I did. I think my new thing will be reading author’s diaries, biographies or essays before I embark on their fiction, if at all possible. I feel that after reading these essays,several which have biographical elements), I am in a better position to understand what Ms. Morrison is trying to do as a writer and who her influences are,and so on.

This essay collection covered many topics, for example book reviews, her early life, black history, academia, language etc.My favourite essay by far was the profoundly-moving tribute to James Baldwin, “James Baldwin: His Voice Remembered; Life in His Language.”

"No one possessed or inhabited language for me the way you did. You made American English honest - genuinely international. You exposed its secrets and reshaped it until it was truly modern dialogic, representative, humane. You stripped it of ease and false comfort and fake innocence and evasion and hypocrisy. And in place of deviousness was clarity. In place of soft plump lies was a lean, targeted power. In place of intellectual disingenuousness and what you called ''exasperating egocentricity,'' you gave us undecorated truth. You replaced lumbering platitudes with an upright elegance. You went into that forbidden territory and decolonized it, ''robbed it of the jewel of its naivete,'' and un-gated it for black people so that in your wake we could enter it, occupy it, restructure it in order to accommodate our complicated passion - not our vanities but our intricate, difficult, demanding beauty, our tragic, insistent knowledge, our lived reality, our sleek classical imagination - all the while refusing ''to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize [ us ] .'' In your hands language was handsome again. In your hands we saw how it was meant to be: neither bloodless nor bloody, and yet alive."

A beautiful collection of essays I would be happy to re-read.
The First Man - Albert Camus, David Hapgood This book was not what I expected. Due to the philosophical, melancholy nature of the first two Camus books I’ve read, (The Stranger and The Plague), I expected this book to be more academic, but it was far from it; it’s a more personal book, nostalgic, full of feelings and memories.

This book is considered to be an autobiographical novel, and its unedited manuscript was found in the car wreckage in which Camus was killed. Even for an unedited piece of work, it is simply a masterpiece. It was interesting to read Camus' annotations, and “see” the thought-process in his writing. The markings and notes definitely made Camus appear more "human" than he seems to be in his other books. The deep philosophical musings from his other books is notably missing.

Jacques Cormery (Camus), a poor, gifted French child, was born and raised in Algeria by a semi-deaf mother and a domineering grandmother. As an adult (40 years old), he becomes more curious about his father, Henri, who died during the war at the very young age of 29. Not knowing his father clearly affected Cormery:

“Something here was not in the natural order and, in truth, there was no order but chaos when the son was older than the father.”

Unfortunately, nobody in his family could really help him on his quest:

“In a family where they spoke little, where no one read or wrote, with an unhappy listless mother,who would have informed him about his young, pitiable father?”

However, despite his frustration, Cormery (Camus) understands the situation; he understands poverty and its effect on people:

“To begin with, poor people’s memory is less nourished than that of the rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughout lives that are grey and featureless. Of course there is the memory of the heart that they say is the surest kind, but the heart wears out with sorrow and labour, it forgets sooner under the weight of fatigue. Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.”


I will end with an excerpt from a letter that Louis Germain (Camus' teacher, the man responsible for rescuing Camus from illiteracy) wrote to Camus:

"Who is Camus? I have the impression that those who try to penetrate your nature do not quite succeed. You have always shown an instinctive reticence about revealing your nature, your feelings. You succeed all the more for being unaffected, direct."

I would highly recommend it to all Camus fans. This is the kind of book that will stay with the reader for a very long time.
Assata: An Autobiography - Assata Shakur, Angela Y. Davis This was a brilliant autobiography about an amazing and resilient woman. I’ve heard Assata Shakur’s name several times over the years but I knew next to nothing about her. It was only when earlier on this year her name resurfaced when she became the only woman on the FBI’s most wanted list that I decided to read the book to learn what all the brouhaha was about.

This is one of the most riveting books I have ever read. I experienced so many emotions when reading this book. For the first part of the book, the main emotion was disgust and shock, firstly at the police brutality Assata experienced (it was very hard to read some of the graphic scenes) , and also at the American judicial system which was clearly racist.

The book tells two stories concurrently; the chapters about Assata’s court case for supposedly murdering a state trooper and subsequent escape from prison were nicely interspersed with her story of her growing up until she became a member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. Her writing has her genuine and authentic voice and her story is enthralling. She has such a brilliant sense of humour. The whole book was very readable and informative.

“I keep staring at him. Nobody could look that corny. He’s like a ghost from the past. I’m convinced he doesn’t know it’s 1973.” (Assata talking about the prosecutor at her trial).

“For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.”

“The almighty dollar is King; those who have the most money control the country and, through campaign contributions, buy and sell presidents, congressmen, and judges, the ones who pass the laws and enforce the laws that benefit their benefactors.”



One thing that impressed me about Assata were her great points of observation about poor education, slavery and racism, and the evils of capitalism. She is a great advocate for African/African-American culture and spends some time talking about how Eurocentrism is one of the main reasons why black music, art and literature is unfortunately often considered “primitive.” She believes that what’s important in life is having personal dignity and she exhorts people of the African diaspora to be proud of their heritage. The book made me question why the world is seemingly pushing for homogeneity when cultural diversity is a lot more interesting.

I was curious about some things, for example Assata’s insistence of spelling America and court with k’s instead of c’s, and her haphazard capitalizing, or lack thereof of the letter “I.” Was she trying to rebel? I’m not sure. I also wish she had included how she had escaped from prison. I guess the reasons why she didn’t are obvious but a quick google search told me how it was achieved so it’s not exactly top-secret.

I feel regardless of whether one feels Assata was guilty or innocent (personally, I don’t understand why she was put on the FBI list after 40 years), everyone should read this book. Yes, race is a huge part of it but capitalism is also talked about a lot and I think her insights into the system are very useful and enlightening.



Culture – Assata Shakur

I must confess that waltzes
do not move me.
I have no sympathy
for symphonies.

I guess I hummed the Blues
too early,
and spent too many midnights
out wailing to the rain.
The Primary Colors: Three Essays - Alexander Theroux “Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in Basic Color Terms demonstrate exhaustively and empirically, the very simple thesis that anywhere in the world, as a language develops and acquires names for color, the colors always enter in the same order. The most primitive are black and white. Then red. Then either green or yellow.” – Alexander Theroux, The Primary Colors

This is a brilliant book that will open your eyes to the world of colour. It’s a collection of three essays based on the primary colours: blue, yellow and red.

Blue

“Its odd strength but soft moody ethereality is yet another enigma in the colour.”

“It represents tradition, contentment, timelessness, fulfillment, fullness and lasting immemorial values.”

Yellow

“Yellow is vagueness and luminousness, both.”

“I once knew a young woman from Moorestown, New Jersey, whose voice, I used to think, was pale yellow, as enervatedly she droned on and on in her dull, unimaginative way.”

Red

“Red is the boldest of all colors. It stands for charity and martyrdom, hell, love, youth, fervor, boasting, sin and atonement.”

“It is generally agreed that of all colors, red has the strongest chroma and the greatest power of attraction. It is at once positive, aggressive and exciting. It is strong, simple, primary.”

This is a very informative book; it taught me so much from categories such as literature, poetry, linguistics, art, history, religion, science, botany, mythology and culture. It was a fascinating read and has a lot of interesting personal anecdotes and references to literature and art that I will look up later. Alexander Theroux is extremely erudite and I found myself looking up words in a dictionary more than a few times.

It took a Google search for me to realize that Alexander Theroux is the brother of Paul Theroux, the famous travel writer, and thus the uncle of Louis Theroux, the journalist. What an incredible literary family!


The Fortune of the Rougons  - Émile Zola, Brian Nelson My first Zola book and an introduction to the Rougon and Macquart families. Such horrible people, for the most part. So much greed, sloth and ignorance. This should be a fun series!
The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One - Margaret Lobenstine “If I were to envision the Renaissance approach to life, the traditional career metaphors of a highway to follow or a mountain to climb wouldn’t come to mind. The Renaissance approach to life looks more like a tree branching out in myriad directions, some branches overlapping, some intertwining, and some just finding their own merry ways to the sunlight.”

I’m usually not a fan of these types of books; from my experience they usually have a catchy title and seem to offer so much, yet I often end up feeling underwhelmed as the book spits out cliché upon cliché. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I think I read it at the right moment of my life, just when I was considering going back to school and changing careers. It resonated with me as a result.

The book is about the Renaissance Soul (RS). Lobenstine defines a RS as one who loves problem solving, learning and experiencing new challenges. A RS gets excited by many things at the same time, finds it difficult to choose just one, and is scared at the prospect of being stuck in the same career for life. Though it may sound nice to have more than one interest, society doesn’t make it easy for us. RS’s are called flaky and are admonished about not being able to stick to one career. However,Lobenstine says we must “honour our delight in variety,rather than forcing us to choose only one thing.”

This book is very helpful in teaching RS’s to own their uniqueness and their curious nature.There are also many examples of RS’s (both modern-day and historical)and their lives in the book, as well as advice about career options and time planning for RS’s. Included was also some information that didn’t apply to me, but may be useful for some other people (ex. The parents of RS teenagers).

I found the book quite informative. It was very helpful to realize that having lots of interests could give one a competitive edge, as in society we are often told to specialize on one thing or forget about ever making enough money to survive. However, this books shows that we all have several options; it’s comforting to know that Jack’s and Jill’s of all trades can make a living and be content at the same time!