It took me a long time to read this book, not because there was any fault in the prose. Far from it. Brathwaite writes with clarity, humor, and a straIt took me a long time to read this book, not because there was any fault in the prose. Far from it. Brathwaite writes with clarity, humor, and a straightforward awareness of so many difficult questions about life in contemporary America.
The first half of the book deals with being gay, gay sex, bodybuilder issues, all in the context of being Black and gay. The second half branches out wider into the fretful, intersecting circles of being gay today, being Black today, Black rage--white rage, which is a threat to everyone--gender, queerness, and the eddies that whirl off from these circles.
In talking about gay spaces that are supposed to be save for gay folks, but there's safe for white gays and safe for Black gays, he says:
But darker skin comes with the expectation of violence, as does a lower economic class, since those Black gay clubs are often in the hood. Even when they're not, the expectation is that the bar will be patronized by poorer people, despite the existence of an exorbitant cover and watered-down drinks. Being Black in the gay community feels more second-class than being Black in America as a whole. In the gay community, you're actually encouraged to settle for separate but less-equal, whether it's a bar, or the apps, or health services. But on the other hand, you're also expected to stand with and support your gay community, unquestioningly, regardless of how your community treats you.
He finally addresses the issue of rage, and how he handles it. How it might be handled; his empathy for all those raised angry, and its toxic effects, is there, caught fast like a beacon in the deluge.
An articulate, sobering, worthwhile book for any reader who would like to read more Black voices. ...more
An old African proverb says, “When an elder dies, a library is burned.” I am not yet an elder, but I do feel like a portal between two worlds . . .
In An old African proverb says, “When an elder dies, a library is burned.” I am not yet an elder, but I do feel like a portal between two worlds . . .
In this newly-published memoir, Shugri Said Salh takes the reader from the time she was six years old, and sent to live with her grandmother in the desert, to her escape from war-torn Somalia and the beginning of her new life in Canada.
The thing the reader ought to know up front is that there is some graphic stuff in this memoir. Some of it is what you might expect when a country is ripped apart by war, when the social order is destroyed, but much of it is age-old custom, which firmly maintains women as subordinate to men—a situation that considerably worsened when a new and ultra-conservative form of Islam spread across that part of Africa. As always, war, and male-dominated reinterpretation of Islam’s holy writ, is toughest on the old, young, and disabled, and most especially on the women.
Not that women don’t have their place in maintaining customs that make the rest of the world flinch. When she was eight years old, it was the women of the clan who took her to be “circumcised.” With the clarity and dignity that highlights the entire book, Shugri Said Salh explains the thinking behind this cruel custom, and why it’s still carried out to this day.
Dignity is a significant theme in this memoir. Early on, she lovingly describes her ayeeyo (grandmother)’s life in the desert, which was precariously balanced between drought and predatory animals; the grandmother never knew how to read, but her insight and compassion, her strength, are conveyed through the stream of small anecdotes that make up the early chapters, demonstrating the powerful effect ayeeyo had on Shugri Said Sahl’s life.
The opening might seem confusing, as Shugri Said Salh does some jinking back and forth in time, but the narrative settles into a linear progression fairly soon, particularly when she is able to rely on her own memories, rather than piecing early childhood glimpses with what she was subsequently told by other relatives.
One of the most complex of her relatives is her father, a teacher and a holy man, who insisted that his many daughters (he had twenty-three children by various wives over the decades) be educated, in spite of the prevailing custom that only sons ought to be schooled. Her father said, “if you educate a son, you educate one person, but if you educate a daughter, you educate the whole community.” But this father’s teaching method was extreme physical cruelty: if his children did not memorize lessons to his satisfaction. His beatings resulted in emotional as well as physical trauma.
After her beloved mother died, she ended up living in various places, including an orphanage, which was her first exposure to white people and Western culture. She describes, with vivid images, life in Mogadishu, which was slowly eroding toward war. Again, with that sense of humane balance, she describes the benefits of living under the dictator who controlled the country, before getting to the fallout of the dictator’s less admirable practices.
And after that, the memoir takes a turn toward grim as she describes life as a teenager in a country descending into the horrors of war. But the book is not all horror. She learned the art of storytelling from her grandmother, and that shows in the skillful way the book is written. There are countless anecdotes that paint vivid glimpses of various personalities, including the strong Somali appreciation for poetry, all woven together with a thread of humor. Even in the midst of terrible destruction, there are moments of laughter, such as when a fine red dress has the unexpected result of causing a camel to become, ahem, amorous.
The book does need advisory warnings of all kinds, including animal cruelty as well as depiction of the human side of grim statistics about women, but Shugri Said Sahl never lets the reader forget the dignity, generosity, and worth of the women who helped shape her into who she is today. I began this book intending to dip into it over a series of nights and ended up so engrossed I read it all in one sitting.
These selections from the four million words of coded diary Lister wrote over the course of her life reinforce the notion that gay and lesbian life waThese selections from the four million words of coded diary Lister wrote over the course of her life reinforce the notion that gay and lesbian life was very much a thing all along, but people dared not talk about it other than to their journal, or to a very trusted few.
Anne Lister had coded words within coded words. Such as 'kiss' meant sex or orgasm. None of the terms people used then got handed down because everyone had to live two lives, and the secret life was seldom detailed the way Lister does here.
She was born to the upper level of the gentry, though the family was running out of money. Through the diaries I gained the impression of a woman very proud of her class, and who thought of herself as a woman--but at the same time she thought nothing of getting out there with the men to do hard labor around the estate. And she ordered, and wore, masculine garments, such as a leather waistcoat, etc. She liked to dress male, and she also loved her femme finery.
She was also a staunch member of her church, and some entries indicate her inner struggle to reconcile to societal expectations, but she finally resolved that God made her that way, so it had to be okay, and anyway, most of the biblical references against same sex were aimed at men, not women. Because she was upfront to the aunt and uncle she lived with: she would never marry, and she "liked the ladies."
What's more, she had no trouble finding ladies who liked her, and who were willing to experiment, at least a little. She carried on an affair with a married woman--the woman having to marry because however else would she live? The choices were so few, and most of them pretty bleak if you did not have family money.
Anne Lister also struggles with crushing on women of a lower class. She is conservative, proud of her rank in life--a snob, in our terms, but at the same time she was gender-fluid in a way that many assume reserved for the 21st century. There are plenty of other Anne Listers through history, their voices just aren't heard for various reasons.
The rest of the diary is about her daily doings. She was not famous for anything, she created no great things, but she was clear-eyed about her own life, and how she wanted to live it. She also records how local men reacted to her, sometimes following her to offer themselves as a husband, and once, a man asked if she had a male member. So we get glimpses of how she was viewed in the community (she was known as "Gentleman Jack"), which again makes it clear that at the local level, gender fluidity was shrugged off in her particular community. This particular woman lived an otherwise ordinary life, suggesting that many others did as well. They just had to do it in secret....more
This memoir has been on my TBR stack for quite a while. Given recent events, it seemed appropriate to excavate it from the pile and read it.
I thought This memoir has been on my TBR stack for quite a while. Given recent events, it seemed appropriate to excavate it from the pile and read it.
I thought it would be a nighttime book for a week or so, but I ended up reading it all in one night. It's that powerful, that effective, that humane though it deals with some of the worst of human nature, especially when made manifest by custom and law.
My biggest takeaway was a reaffirmation of the fact that humor is one of the most powerful tools we have. It can be used as a weapon, especially when it's cruel and divisive, but when humor is evoked the way Trevor Noah uses it, it has the ability to shed light into situations so painful that many would have to shut their eyes and look away, overwhelmed by empathy and guilt.
Trevor Noah grew up in South Africa, just as apartheid was beginning to break up. And it wasn't a clean break, though many have presented it that way--or wished it were that way.
Added to that, he was a child in a situation in which a guardian was horribly abusive.
At the beginning of chapters, he includes some brief but pungent histories of apartheid and related issues.
And yet the book is not bitter, nor excoriating. It manages to be hilarious at times, ruefully funny at others, and always sharply insightful. I'm so glad I bought it in print, as I know I'll be reading it again....more
This highly readable. absorbing memoir has already received a huge number of reviews, so I don't feel I need to summarize Tracy Walder's background, oThis highly readable. absorbing memoir has already received a huge number of reviews, so I don't feel I need to summarize Tracy Walder's background, or the general layout of the book.
It's a very intense look at her experiences overseas while a CIA Agent as part of the Poison Squad (her name--I have no idea if that is a real thing). There were some very grim descriptions (severed heads, anyone?) but what I found most disturbing was the hate-filled misogyny aimed at her, especially during her FBI training. From her perspective, she was already judged for being a woman, a Jew, and blonde. At the FBI she was ostracized for being part of the CIA.
Her motivation for writing this book seems to be aimed at women, young women especially, whose brains and talent and skills are so very needed to fix this world full of toxic masculinity. Which sums up Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Otherwise she largely stays away from politics, outside of a few remarks here and there. Her focus was on her experiences as an agent of the CIA and then of the FBI, and the people she encountered within the service, and as targets.
It can be unnerving at time, and also moving, such as the incident after she fell down a stone stairway and lay in a military hospital bed at an undisclosed Middle Eastern hotspot. While she was there, a bombing happened elsewhere and a bunch of local women were badly wounded, suffering burns over most of their bodies.
As she lay in the hospital bed, she turned her head to meet the eyes of the woman next to her, whose face was badly burned. Walder describes how she stayed there, blending their gazes, their breathing even synchronized, a conscious effort after a nurse told her quietly that none of the women had made it--and they didn't have hope for this one either. But Walder wanted to give this woman as much human contact as she could until the end, and did.
The only negative observation I have to make is the long bits of redacted text marked with tons of ~~~~~. A substitute word such as thingy or McGuffin could have served just as well for the short bits, and as for the long paragraphs of ~~~~, they were unnecessary. It was sufficient to state at the outset that portions of her memoir were redacted for security reasons; this was not a report, or even a white paper, with footnotes noting every resource. The memoir was full of opinion, emotional reactions, and changed names, so the ~~~ seemed pointlessly intrusive.
But other than that I found it an absorbing read, and I hope that women like her are paving the way for a new generation of women.
Not long ago, when I was trying to explain to my thirty-something daughter how utterly mesmerizing the Beatles’ sound was . . . how do you characterizNot long ago, when I was trying to explain to my thirty-something daughter how utterly mesmerizing the Beatles’ sound was . . . how do you characterize how something so familiar could sound new? My kids grew up with the Beatles being part of what is now called Classic Rock. Classic Rock! I can imagine the jaw-dropped horror of my shaggy-haired peers back in the sixties.
When I saw that one of the Alice Cooper band’s members had written a memoir I had to read it. Though I’d never liked their music—it was way too crazy male-gaze for me as a teen and young adult—I knew the names, and the look, and I also was aware of how their intense theatricality changed the look of rock music, and formed punk, especially the LA Punk scene, which I was a part of in the late seventies and early eighties.
It surprised me to discover that the germinating idea behind Alice Cooper was an experience similar to one I’d shared: a talent show for kids. Dennis and his friend Vince did what I and three girls did: borrow guitars, make up silly songs to Beatles tunes, and pretend to be The Beatles.
In my situation, we four twelve year olds combed our hair in front of our faces, strummed the single chord we’d been taught, and started singing our (kaff) clever parody, “She was just 94, and shaped like a door. . .” and the rest of our amazing lyrics were lost because the entire audience erupted into frenzied screaming.
They shouted and shrieked until to the end. Even months later, kids I’d never spoken to before came up and said, “Weren’t you one of the Beatles in the talent show?” For one day I was famous, and it felt . . . unreal.
Well, the same thing happened to Dennis and Vince, inspiring them to go on to become musicians. The jet-force exhilaration of your music gripping thousands—millions—of close packed humans by flesh and spirit . . . what incredible power, what a rush!
And what a cost to keep fueling it?
Dennis talks engagingly, and with the resonant note of experience, about the pure white fire of creative flow—when it’s flowing, it’s a nerve-jolting, heart-hammering, brain-frying lightning strike. Few can control it, sparking emotional roller coasters accelerated by that step into unreality that fame causes, which can trick the unwary into thinking that the rules no long apply. It’s because that white fire is not controllable any more than lightning is, and so the young musicians would try anything—anything—to get it back.
Here’s the dangerous thing about the white fire, whether you’re high on drugs or not, you believe your every utterance is art, every movement freighted with meaning. It’s only when you’re stone cold sober that you realize that the Magical Mystery Tour Bus— if you are not in control, the drugs are—looks to everyone else like a bunch of loud, smelly, drooling louts hooting like apes.
Jimi Hendrix . . . Jim Morrison . . Janis Joplin . . . they all sought any method or means they could to tame that fire. They were surrounded by smiling hipsters cooing admiration and handing out street stuff like candy—very expensive candy, but money became one of those unreal things—and they dropped, or rushed, or sped, or mainlined, or whatever it took, to find what they thought was the fire, the attempts intensified into semblance of meaning, perceptions that exalted trivia into a tapestry of gravitas that unraveled with the bleak dawn.
Written with the aid of Rolling Stone writer Chris Hodenfield, Dennis Dunaway tells a vividly engaging, often pungent and irreverent, but at heart human and humane story of a bunch of nerdy guys in Phoenix AZ during the early sixties who made it to the top—and then, at the apex of their career, crashed and burned.
Many of the Alice Cooper myths are exploded (like the so-called chicken) as Dunaway looks honestly at the toll the rock and roll lifestyle took on them, made exponentially tougher by the fallout of fame.
As soon as the actual hardcover comes out I’m buying a copy for my drummer son, whose band is just getting going. I’ll bet he’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
This breezy, often hilarious memoir should appeal to fans of the TV show Parks and Recreation, and fans of the musical Hamilton, which Retta is obsessThis breezy, often hilarious memoir should appeal to fans of the TV show Parks and Recreation, and fans of the musical Hamilton, which Retta is obsessed with. Along with handbags, and various other parts of modern life that she digresses about with exuberant enthusiasm. I have zero interest in handbags, and couldn't tell a "name" one worth thousands from a cheapo, but I enjoyed Retta's sheer zest.
The parts I liked best were her frank memories about growing up a plus-size person of color, with immigrant parents, in poverty. Watching her work toward success was heart-warming as well as interesting.
Retta does not hold back from delivery opinions in salty language. I could hear her voice through the narrative, which made it that much more fun.
This is the second book by this mother and daughter team that I've read. Comprised of short anecdotes or commentary, it makes perfect beach or commuteThis is the second book by this mother and daughter team that I've read. Comprised of short anecdotes or commentary, it makes perfect beach or commuter read. The two cover every subject under the sun that might be of interest to American women of the mainstream: there's aging, and being a thirty-something, sports, the election (their hope was painful to read in retrospect), and the dream of owning a white picket fence. While aware of the status of 'white picket fence' in American lore.
But they also explore the inexplicables of modern life: owning an iPhone, nude dining (yes, apparently it's a thing), when to wear a bra and when not to bother, dieting, dog ownership, the excruciating "games" at bridal showers, weird stuff you find on the Internet, and the etiquette of Twitter. Male birth control. Weird super foods, and how big butts are supposed to be a sign of longevity. Some of these will cause a snicker, at least they did for me.
Here and there you get a glimpse of the writing life, which I enjoyed even though my process couldn't be more different (Lisa likes the sound of the TV running, which would drive me insane), and between the snickers there are thoughtful anecdotes, and one lovely one about taking the summer ferry to Ellis Island.
Mostly, though, it's quick reads aimed unapologetically at a female audience. Odd ducks as we all are, or feel ourselves to be (I cringed in sympathy at the one about attending a big publisher party, at which you know no one), there is a solidarity in fellow-feel.
This fascinating book was by turns heart-breaking and thought-provoking.
The basic outline: Elizabeth Rynecki grew up with her great-grandfather’s artwThis fascinating book was by turns heart-breaking and thought-provoking.
The basic outline: Elizabeth Rynecki grew up with her great-grandfather’s artwork around her, and never thought too much about it. Her grandparents didn’t talk much about the past, and only spoke Polish to one another.
Her grandfather once mentioned to her that he might write his life’s story, but she, without knowing the context—and with the quick judgment typical of the young—told him he wasn’t a writer, and the subject was dropped. However, after he died, when she and her father went to clear out his house, they not only came across the art work which she was now beginning to appreciate, but she discovered a handwritten memoir, about her grandfather’s life in Poland before World War II, and what happened to the family during the Holocaust.
That changed everything.
Using this memoir as a basis, and considerable research, Elizabeth Rynecki tells the story of Moshe Rynecki, whose deeply devout father had not wanted him to become an artist, but finally and reluctantly gave in. Moshe Rynecki spent years at his art, making some 800 pieces before the world began disintegrating around their ears.
What do you do with that much art when you have little money, you’re old, what few rights you have are being taken away by day and the Germans are coming with their guns? He ripped the art out of the frames and bundled paintings and drawings in groups of fifty, many of which he gave away. He started a kind of catalogue, but was unequal to the task . . . he told his progeny to go to safety, and his wife, but he was determined to stay with his Jewish brethren, and whatever happened to them would happen to him.
Well, it did. Meanwhile, the family was scattered, many murdered along with millions of others. The survivors, at the end of the war, then faced the monumental task of finding one another, along with some twenty million other displaced persons, with no resources. Years later they, and a small bundle of Moshe Rynecki’s art, made it to the USA for a fresh start.
Segue up to the grandfather’s death: suddenly those warm, wonderful paintings of ordinary Jewish people going about their lives had a context, and Elizabeth Rynecki was determined to recover her great-grandfather’s art as a legacy for her own family.
And so the next stage of the story begins. Right after the war, no one would take the art, when the family tried to sell some in order to survive. A few places let them know that they would gladly accept donations, but museums dedicated to the preservation of Jewish art and culture had scarce funding, and not much interest in the mainstream.
Gradually that changed—and unfortunately for Rynecki, she discovered that now that the paintings had gained worth, people wanted to hang onto them, and resisted her efforts to reach out. A lawyer who dealt with the complicated mess having to do with Jewish properties stolen by the Nazis, told her flat out that being a descendant of the artist was the least likely way to ever recover anything. Why? Because maybe the artist had given the art to a museum, which was then looted by Nazis, so the provenance would trace back to the museum. Or maybe they’d sold it, and after the Nazis looted the gallery, etc etc.
Elizabeth Rynecki had to figure out what it was she wanted to do. There was no way she was going to recover that art—but why not make a historical record? And so began detective work, meetings in several different countries, exchanges of harrowing stories going back to World War II. And the discovery that some—even fellow descendants of Holocaust victims—still refused to talk to her, to even send jpg.s of the art to be shared with the world. There is no manual, she points out, for proper behavior for descendants of Holocaust victims. Who owes what to whom? Especially in the case of art?
The book is replete with reproductions, including gleanings of pieces that seem to have been lost, and the notes at the end are as fascinating as the story itself.
This collection of blog riffs, anecdotes, and mini-essays was put together by the mother and daughter duo, Lisa ScottolinCopy received from NetGalley.
This collection of blog riffs, anecdotes, and mini-essays was put together by the mother and daughter duo, Lisa Scottoline & Francesca Serritelli. It ranges over the entire spectrum of life, specifically female life, from the tribulations of dating for twenty-somethings to menopausal issues, including care for, and losing, a beloved matriarch.
Most of the riffs are mildly humorous (and some of them try a little too hard to be funny) but the ones I responded to the strongest were the glimpses of their lives, written simply yet conveying a compassionate view of the quirks and quandaries of life, and especially of other people. Even the one about identity theft--when one of them discovered that a group of women con artists had stolen her social security number, real name, and address to open a host of credit cards before going on a spending spree--was not angrily bitter.
Best of all was the short riff called “Love Without Rough Edges,” a beautifully poignant visit carried by gently evocative details. But there is such a range here that readers are sure to respond to some aspect of their adventures, whether it's being discovered by workmen staring through the window while one is relaxing at home without a bra to pets, dieting, food, friendship, and the warp and weft of everyday life.
There is no plot. Halfway through reading this I thought, this is the perfect summer gift for people who say they don't read. The book can be dipped into on any page, the essays take at most ten minutes to read, usually less, and most of them leave one with a sense of the authors' generous view of the world, and their determination to live lives of good will....more
Wrapped around another memoir of the Mogadishu action that also inspired Black Hawk Down and similar works, Howard Wasdin, with the aid of a ghostwritWrapped around another memoir of the Mogadishu action that also inspired Black Hawk Down and similar works, Howard Wasdin, with the aid of a ghostwriter, relates his life history. beginning with the extremely violent abuse by his step-father. He's right that in those days what happened in the home stayed in the home; he expresses a certain amount of insight into the consequences of abuse, without quite seeing the whole picture, which rings true for those of us of a certain age.
He works back and forth through time, covering his training to become a SEAL, and finally covers the details of that action in Somalia, before segueing to the present.I found it absorbing reading, sometimes lightened by humor, sometimes sharply painful. ...more
That part of the world was one long pink block on the map of Europe and Asia, the letters USSR stretched acrossWhen I was young, Estonia didn’t exist.
That part of the world was one long pink block on the map of Europe and Asia, the letters USSR stretched across from West Germany to the Pacific Ocean. Estonia was one of those names I rarely encountered in history books, like Mesopotamia and Sudetenland. They seemed the interstices between interminable wars, but otherwise without context. It wasn’t until I’d reached fifty that I began to learn about Estonia, flourishing in its 22 years of independence before the Soviet Union—ironically established to give power to the people—began systematically to erase Estonia’s language, culture, and finally its people in mass deportations.
Elin Toona Gottschalk writes:
A memoir is not a document about who did what and when, on a specific date, but who did what and when in a specific situation. A memoir is a passing caravan of events and characters creating an indelible impression on eyewitnesses, whether age seven or seventy, who write it down. One person’s memoir becomes a book. A hundred similar books become history.
She was born toward the end of Estonia’s brief period of independence during the Twentieth Century; the first threat was the Russians, then the Germans came to liberate them. Estonia very soon found out what being liberated by Nazi Germany meant. She was seven years old when her mother, grandmother, and she fled Estonia toward the end of World War II, in an effort to get to the West and safety as their world came to pieces around them.
It was about to get a whole lot worse.
ETG opens her book not with her childhood, but later in her life, when her remarkable grandmother was mugged at age 91, in her home in London, for 7 pounds. ETG receives a call from her mother, with whom she’d had a problematical relationship early in life; she leaves for the UK in order to be there for her grandmother.
Grandmother had started rhythmically stroking my fingers — her way of telling me her journey would be no different from what we had already been through, only this time and she was going on ahead instead of Mother. Her face was calm and her eyes the color of quiet waters that had covered the earth since it was created.
She skips back to 1939, and with vivid and emotional expertise evokes her childhood world on the bay in a little town called Haapsalu.
I had no concept of "mothers and fathers," only of people whom I saw every day. At that time in my life relationships were meaningless . . . When grandmother first introduced me to her "dear departed Erni," it was in such a way that when I heard his name, I wanted to hear more.
She had never lost her husband, but had only lost physical sight of him. He was always included in our activities. When we walked around the town's unpaved paths and narrow streets, my legs short, my grandmother's old and tired, we always stopped by grandfather's monument to rest on its base. When we sat down grandmother never fail to greet her husband or exchange a few words with him. I had the distinct impression that he both heard and understood what she was saying.
With deftly poetic and compassionate skill, ETG takes the time to introduce the people in her life, mostly women: her grandmother, Ella Enno, wife to a famous Estonian poet who had died of pneumonia at age 57. Earning a worker’s wage, Erni’d spent his money on books rather than heating. Great-Aunt Alma, whose emotions were expressed through playing the piano. She kept house and grew vegetables, and earned a bit of money offering piano lessons.
ETG’s parents lived in Tallinn. They were well-known actors. They visited occasionally, bringing sophistication and cigarette smoke into the tiny house in Haapsalu. From the intensely observant child’s eye view ETG describes the slow increase in tension—the adults won’t tell the children anything; whenever they wanted to talk seriously, they told her to go pick dill, even after there was no more dill to pick—as the Soviets encroach, and then comes war.
I told Vilja [a playmate] I was going back to heaven when I died.
She said she was going to her other grandmother in France.
"Jesus was born in a stable," I told her. "Where were you born?"
"Mother said I was born under a gooseberry bush," said Vilja promptly.
"I was dropped off in Tallinn, at Mrs. Takk’s house, and when mother's theater season started I was brought here, to Haapsalu."
Vilja just nodded. It made perfect sense. Our gooseberry bushes were not thriving on account of the annual flooding, and you needed to be born somewhere dry.
Grandmother was the primary caretaker of little Elin. They were compatible personalities, both artistic, with a keen sense of poetry. Both visionaries. Mother was practical, strong, loathed anything having to do with religion or spiritual nature. She was not the least bit domestic—did not even know how to boil water—and was appalled at her daughter for her apparent lack of looks, her seeming clumsiness, her odd questions, and the fact that she was deemed tone deaf. (For the rest of her life, ETG refused to sing, because when she was about five she was tested by the theater crowd, then dismissed for being tone deaf.)
When it came time to leave, Aunt Alma refused. She promised to keep the house for their return. Mother, in Elin’s words, became Father when he refused to go with them. The three left late in 1944, first boarding a Polish boat. When it is attacked, the survivors are forced to the German coast—scrabbling for shelter in tunnels and broken houses.
When the planes arrived they brought rain, but it was not the rain mother had feared. In the tunnel we had been aware of the bombers and felt the explosions, but in the roofless ruin we were also seeing the planes and the explosions all around us. The noise was deafening. The siren, the rattle of antiaircraft guns, and the explosions were the same as usual, but now we could also see the underbellies of the bombers.
Wave after wave of them, illuminated by flares, searchlights, and tracers. The planes formed a droning, moving canopy, surrounded by smoke in a steady stream of dark objects falling vertically. Once in a while a larger object burst into flames and spiraled down along with them. Everything that hit the ground exploded.
Lost for a time, they moved from one place to another as refugees. The Germans despised them as filthy foreigners; they took up temporary quarters in slimy basements, ruined rooms, and in all these places Grandmother would set about trying to wrest a modicum of civilization out of the chaos, as Mother went out and scavenged.
They met a lot of desperate women of all ages, and children, some of whom Elin played with, and some who were extraordinarily cruel, especially at the school she was forced to attend before it, too, was bombed. Run by a fanatical Nazi teacher, Elin was subjected to bullying and humiliation under that teacher’s merciless eye.
War seem to be something only the men enjoyed, until they were caught and made prisoners.
They took refugee for a while in a cemetery, discovering that there was already a community living among the vaults and tombs. Winter was even crueler than the Hitler Youth bullies and the bombers (the children could tell where they were headed to bomb by how high or low they flew as well as the direction), until spring of 1945 brought the end of the war . . .
But by no means the end of cruelty, danger, or suffering. Some of the roughest reading in the entire book is here after the war, interspersed between painfully insightful observations, and occasional moments of quite haunting (I choose the word deliberately) beauty. Or emotional wrench, such as seeing her father, then going out and pulling up some grass and stuffing it in his pocket so that he will not forget her when he leaves again for good.
By the war’s end there were some 13 million displaced persons, Grandmother, Mother, and Elin among them. Mother continued to strike out, coming back when she could with bits of food and clothing. Elin was dressed largely in cast offs and rags by the time they at last were able to make their way to England. She finally observes that the difference between civilization and not is the existence of toilets.
When they reach England, with all their despised bundles (including Grandmother’s carefully preserved mememtos of her poet husband) there is a hitch: the cruel indenture that basically made slaves of foreign workers did not allow for a child. For a year or so Elin lived in the woods by day, and slept in a rented bed in an ancient cottage without plumbing until the inevitable disaster after she drank two cups of cocoa.
After the authorities discovered her she was put in an orphanage, though she spoke no English, and for a time she was made into a drudge, and despised and abused as a “German.” Her treatment improved slightly when they discovered that she was not actually German, but she was still putting more time into service than into education—and so the all-important 11+ passed her by. Her mother and grandmother were appalled, and angry. They, like so many displaced persons, had come from educated backgrounds—musicians, scientists, professors, artists of all kinds, now pushing brooms and working in asbestos factories or coal mines.
She ends up in her mid teens working at a loom in a textile factory. The setting is unrelentingly ugly, the noise is so bad she begins going deaf. It isn’t until she gets away for a brief vacation to Holland, where she sees beauty again, that she makes a promise that she is going to do something with her life, rather than stick at the loom because that is easiest.
We don’t actually see her become a writer and part-time actor, though her first Estonian novel won her an award. I would have loved to see that, but this memoir is primarily about the three women and how being refugees from an erased country affected their lives and their relationships, and how they deal with being permanent exiles due to no fault of their own.
ETG becomes successful enough that she attracts the notice of the KGB—which in turn leads to an FBI and CIA file, and some brief but weird experiences in the spy world. And this after she reaches this country, and is invited to a dinner party and then abused for being “a Nazi” --she has to leave and hide in the woods.
Outside of that, adulthood is good to her, and as time passes, the iron curtain at last disintegrates.
For me, Estonia had become a mythical country and my muse. It was my inner voice, speaking to me in a secret language.
When she finally gets back to Estonia, she is only able to recognize the location of her own home by walking about Haapsalu and trying to find the view from the kitchen window that she had loved as a small girl. In so many ways her exile brings her full circle, but not quite.
The book is full of heartbreak, insight, beauty, and the unheralded and heroic actions of women with no weapons, no power, but a determination to fashion a bit of civilization around them, one castoff or abandoned item at a time. Sometimes it was so harrowing that I could only read a few pages in a session, but I always came back to this compelling, fascinating story. ...more
This book was recommended to me by an Estonian for whom English is a second language. I found a copy, hoping to find more about Estonia during its (toThis book was recommended to me by an Estonian for whom English is a second language. I found a copy, hoping to find more about Estonia during its (too brief) period of independence before it was swallowed up by Russia as a result of WW II.
I was disappointed of that, as the only glimpses we get of Estonia are mainly of a private house on a lake at Kallijärv, which are beautifully, poignantly and idyllically described, evoking fairy tale summers from the late 1920s-1939. That was the author's childhood home.
The book is really about her family, in particular her mother, Maria ("Moura") Ignatievna Zakrevsky, first married to Ioann von Benckendorff, and then very briefly to Baron Nikolai Budberg, however she kept his name and title for the rest of her life.
Moura was an extraordinary figure, first living it up as the wife of a diplomat in the elite social scene in Moscow and Berlin before WW I and the subsequent Russian Revolution. She ended up almost living on the streets in Moscow until taken in by the kindly Maxim Gorky, who helped so very many people. She maintained a long relationship with Gorky, for a time overlapping with that of H.G. Wells, and before that, the diplomatic rockstar (and Casanova-like womanizer) Robert Bruce Lockhart.
Tania Alexander's narrative jumps quite a bit backward and forward in time, sometimes repeating information but her depiction of life at the edge of the Russian empire (and Soviet empire) is as fascinating as the larger than life characters she met through her mother--who apparently added to her own mythology to such an extent that several people have tried to write a biography and had to give up in despair. There was no getting at the truth, as so much that would have corroborated Moura's myths had been destroyed as a result of the war and the establishment of the Iron Curtain.
An enjoyable memoir for its glimpses of amazing times and amazing people, but as a look at Estonia during that period it's bound to be a tad disappointing....more
Rereading this book is a real pleasure. Dana was an extraordinarily good writer, his images so clear that it is easy to follow the complicated life abRereading this book is a real pleasure. Dana was an extraordinarily good writer, his images so clear that it is easy to follow the complicated life aboard ship. It is of especial interest, I think, to California residents, as he spent most of his time sailing up and back along the coast, and thus describes what well-known cities were like during his time of visitation. One of his frequent stops was just a few miles from me--and the house still exists, now protected....more
A fourth-generation descendant of fundamentalist LDS offshoots, Irene LeBaron Spencer writes vividly and passionately about her life as the second wifA fourth-generation descendant of fundamentalist LDS offshoots, Irene LeBaron Spencer writes vividly and passionately about her life as the second wife of Verlan LeBaron, who struggles to support his enormous family and his church, and eventually pretty much failing them all before dying under suspicious circumstances.
She not only details her inward struggle with jealousy, anger, and fear, but the outward struggle with near-starvation poverty, and the crushing load of constant, back-breaking work that fell to the women in order to keep their children fed, clothed, and loved. She also details her religious struggle to reconcile what she had been taught with what she felt and believed. The whole is shot through with a hefty dose of humor....more
A vivid, gritty, intense look at plural marriage from the inside, from the POV of dirt-scrabble poverty. The publisher needs to be cod-slapped for theA vivid, gritty, intense look at plural marriage from the inside, from the POV of dirt-scrabble poverty. The publisher needs to be cod-slapped for the abysmal job in copyediting, but somehow her voice is so strong, her ability to put you in her shoes so involving, somehow the many, many errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation underscore how a smart woman who was through no fault of her own scantily educated can rise above her circumstances and make a good life, and a moral life.
Exceptionally scary when her life dovetails with Ervil LeBaron....more
How I wish a good scholar would flesh out this fascinating memoir written by a former slave who bought her own freedom and ended up as dressmaker to MHow I wish a good scholar would flesh out this fascinating memoir written by a former slave who bought her own freedom and ended up as dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln. The anecdotes reported in this slim history have the ring of truth, and Lincoln and his family glimmer to life in them.
Keckley gets by her slavery years at a brisk pace, without lingering on the beatings, rape, etc. Far more detail is given to the circumstances of her obtaining her freedom, but the main subject of this memoir is Mary Todd Lincoln, as Keckley pretty much spent every day with her during four years of Lincoln's presidency.
Keckley by her own admission seems to be trying for objectivity and honesty as she reports about a complicated (difficult) subject. Mrs. Lincoln comes off as a smart, ambitious, loyal, opinionated, and very volatile woman. She had accrued an enormous debt by the time of her husband's death, that apparently Lincoln never knew about. That debt rode Mrs. Lincoln hard, the more because she found herself without recourse after the assassination.
Bits that stick out are the smallest anecdotes, like Mrs. Lincoln's sudden decision to begin Tad Lincoln's education. His first lesson in reading ends with a reflection on Keckley's part about how a similar ignorant display by a black child would have prompted extrapolations about the stupidity of African Americans. She seems to be a sharp observer of the little interactions between races, and the evolving social milieu of Washington D.C in the 1860s.
It's a fast, absorbing read, conveying a clear picture of a smart woman, but leaving so many fascinating questions unanswered. I hope that some young scholar is going to make this book her project: I would love to find out more about what was not covered....more
Though I am impressed with Rick Atkinson's massive, beautifully written trilogy on WW II, its American-centricness leaves me less than satisfied with Though I am impressed with Rick Atkinson's massive, beautifully written trilogy on WW II, its American-centricness leaves me less than satisfied with respect to not only strategic planning but tactical carry-through, specifically the behind-the-lines actions of the various small units (often termed private armies) such as the LRDG, the SAS, etc.
Popski, born Vladimir Peniakoff, raised in Belgium and working in Egypt previous to the war, decided to get in, and found himself a place. In his own mind, he's a humble, hard-working, non-glory seeking soldier, but to many of his fellow units, he was a crazy demagogue, which I find almost as fascinating as his story. There appears to be a strong rift of class consciousness in his attitude; he demonstrates a particular loathing for the public school officers of David Stirling's sort, to the extent that he didn't want them in his force, even preferring rejects and jailbirds.
Popski works with the local Arabs, drawing on his Egyptian experience, during the North African conflict, and then takes what he learned to the horrible inch-by-inch fight up Italy. It's very interesting to compare his account to others, even if I'm still not getting a clear picture.
Just how important were these guys in turning the tide in North Africa? Rommel's papers, largely written from a god's-eye view, mention them at key places, even going to far as to name Stirling of the SAS.
Anyway, immensely readable, very much a grounds-eye view....more
My travel book (in my bag for when I had to stand in lines or wait in waiting rooms) finally finished yesterday. It's based on the diary by W. StanleyMy travel book (in my bag for when I had to stand in lines or wait in waiting rooms) finally finished yesterday. It's based on the diary by W. Stanley Moss, confined to a commando operation by the British late in the war. The goal (which began half as a joke, according to Moss) was to capture the German commander, General Kreipe--who was, unfortunately, new to his position, the previous commander, Mueller, being a real nasty piece of work.
Because there was a great deal of travel at night and hiding up during the day, Moss and his companions (which includes Patrick Leigh Fermor) had lots of down time. When they ran out of books, they sang songs, talked, and Moss kept up the diary.
The operation itself was a snatch, involving dressing as German sentries to halt the general's vehicle on the way back from his HQ to the villa the German's had taken over for quarters. Patrick Leigh Fermor was to drive the General's car off and dump it, the chauffeur was entrusted to some Cretans (who most likely murdered him), and Moss and company, including sheep thieves and guerrillas, bundled the general up over the mountains, hiding from cordon searches, until they could be picked up by boat.
Strategically it was pretty much a useless gesture, even stupid--Kreipe was a plodder who followed orders, so his removal from the theatre of war did little for the war effort beside piss off the Germans even more. Then the Germans promptly burned whole villages in retaliation.
But the Germans were burning villages anyway, on the least excuse, so this generlnapping didn't alter the situation much either way. What's clear is how much the commandos enjoyed 'the game'--and it really seems to have been a game, with their lives at stake. There is a lot of sudden death in this book, which is told so engagingly, it feels like fiction. It left me quite curious about Moss, though, who, Fermor says in the epilogue, was apparently up there with Jason Bourne (or maybe Stalky) in his sabotage abilities....more
Many years ago, I worked on the same lot that Little House on the Prairie had their studio setup, so I used to see them aroJust the cheer-up I needed.
Many years ago, I worked on the same lot that Little House on the Prairie had their studio setup, so I used to see them around. (I took my sister, a huge fan, over their set once when they were all in the valley). Later, when I left the film industry and had my kid, I watched episodes on a tiny black and white while recovering from C-sec surgery.
So seeing Nellie Olson's scowling face on this book was a must-grab, and it was just as engrossing, and sometimes funny, always breezy, as promised. This is not completely easy-reading--it starts off with horrific child abuse, but matter-of-factly told, and later, she gets into what she did about it, and what she does now to help others caught in the same horror.
Her stories about the stars of the show, and what happened in various episodes, and on her visits to fans, are vivid and entertaining....more
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