Book #49: Sold

Book #49: Sold by Patricia McCormick

September 30, 2013


Since this is a book that I needed to have finished for my class on Tuesday, I decided to finish it quickly (it was a quick read) and knock out one more blog post for the month. I feel like I can get back on track with my personal reading. I've decided to maybe take a break from the classics for a while. I was trying to do one classic, one contemporary, but as soon as I considered shelving the classics (I guess literally, though they're all on my Kindle) for now, I started to get excited again about the next book that I will read. Well, the point of this whole excursion is to keep me reading consistently, and I always feel so much better when I do. I'll keep my lists handy, but I think I'll just let my mood (and my class reading list) drive my choices.

Anyway, even though this was an assigned text, it's one I've been meaning to read. A student at my first teaching assignment recommended it, so I was really glad that my class gave me the excuse to do so. I actually bought a copy; well, I'm going to avoid buying my school books as much as possible, but I don't regret adding this one to my (literal) shelf.

I've touched briefly in a previous post about the current international sex trafficking issue. McCormick, with this story (told in a series of poetic vignettes, making me think somewhat of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, except that the story line was more chronologically coherent) presents a genuine story of a young girl from Nepal, who is sold into slavery and put into a brothel in India. At the beginning of the book, Lakshmi, a young girl, lives with her mother and stepfather. The stepfather is a cad, and doesn't work due to his malformed arm. Instead, he gambles away the little money that Lakshmi and her ama are able to earn from their meager crops. When the family comes into a desperate situation after a flood, the stepfather sells Lakshimi to a woman from "the city." Lakshmi thinks that she is going to be a maid in "the city," not so bad if it means sending money home to her family. That's the kind of situation that her best friend had gotten herself into. But Lakshmi, a poor girl, though bright, if not very well educated, doesn't know the fate that awaits her.

McCormick is not too graphic with the details of Lakshmi being raped by Mumtaz's customers. Mumtaz is the fat Indian woman who essentially owns her, and the other young women in  her house. Lakshmi believes that she will be able to pay off her "debt" to the monstrous woman, but she learns that it will never be so. She will work for her as a prostitute until she gets HIV and is thrown away to beg on the streets, a fate that came to her friend Monica. The story is driven by Lakshimi's determination to get away, and the little hopes and joys she finds in her terrible life: learning how to speak a little Hindi and English, and read a little of each; drinking the cups of tea that the kind delivery boy leaves for her, even though she doesn't dare indulge in even such a small luxury; watching American soap operas and Indian television with the other young women. But when she realizes that she can never get away (if she ran, she'd get caught, beaten, disfigured and disgraced), she becomes desperate, and in spite of the warnings, accepts an offer of help from an American man.

Now, I am a little bothered that Lakshmi's "savior" would be a white American. To be fair, though, McCormick does include a scene where Lakshimi has a drunk American as a "customer." I don't question the authenticity of McCormick's story, though. I know she traveled to India and Nepal and spoke with young women who had been through such experiences, many of them rescued not unlike Lakshmi in the end. I'm glad if men from my own country are doing something, in reality, to help poor girls who end up in such a situation...I guess I just get tired of the whole "white savior" thing, like we're that much better than everyone else or something.

I really don't have any real complaints about this book. As I noted, it was fast-paced, which would be really great for younger readers. Not too graphic, just enough so that Lakshmi's pain and horror could be felt. I think that any books that offer multicultural or international perspectives are important, not just for teen readers, but for all readers. I'm looking forward to discussing this book in my class, though I have to try to reign in my Hermoine tendencies. I'm not the only nerd in class (that's college, and especially grad school, for you), but I hate to be that person.

I couldn't resist putting the actual book cover on here. Look at that girl...she is a baby child. And I imagined that girl through the whole book...haunting.

I guess it's this simple: if people (men particularly, though there are women who are plenty twisted out there) weren't fucking perverts, there wouldn't be this problem. Lakshimi was 13 at the start of the book...probably 14 at the end...and she was ordered to tell "customers" that she was 12. That is disturbing, but what's worse is, I wasn't surprised. I lose faith in humanity sometimes.

Book #48: The War of the Worlds

Book #48: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

September 28, 2013


I had assumed that, with the course on YA literature that I'm taking this semester, that I'd be adding a few more posts to this blog this month. But the past couple of books were ones that I'd already read, and with so much to do with my new teaching job, among other things, I just haven't been reading. I started The War of the Worlds way back after I finished the last book, but haven't read much this past month. I even found a copy of the book in my little school's library, so that I could have an actual book instead of using my Kindle there. In all honesty, the book didn't pull me in. But I made myself sit down and finish it today...I actually read more over the course of the day than I had over the last few weeks, even though this is not a long text by any means. And I did enjoy it more as I went along.

Obviously, science fiction is a hugely popular genre today. There are countless books, movies, and TV shows about aliens, or outer space adventures. But back in Wells's day, I don't imagine that the genre even really existed. I can think of a couple of science fiction texts that, like this one, were true pioneers of the genre. As I read the book today, I could clearly see how many of Wells's ideas still exist in most science fiction works today.

For instance, the idea that alien invaders would be more intelligent creatures than us lowly humans. The Martians, basically brains and tentacles (the gross aliens on The Simpsons seem to have been directly inspired by the ones described in the book), are described as being highly evolved creatures, asexual (their offspring growing off of them, like buds on a plant), without digestive organs (they inject blood from their living victims, such as humans...). Well, I guess it would make sense that people who are intellectual enough to develop the technology to travel across space and time to discover life would be more intelligent than us on Earth, since, you know, we haven't discovered life out in space. Now in our time, with space travel and satellites and stuff, we know that no intelligent life exists on the other planets in our solar system. But back in Wells's time, I guess that life on Mars was still a fanciful idea. Indeed, the idea of 'Martians' still exists in popular culture to this day, though more contemporary science fiction seems to take the more realistic (?) standpoint that if intelligent life is out there, it's very far away, like the stars. We know now that space is vast...we can still only speculate if other life is out there.

Now, as far as the story itself, it goes like this. Mars sends off ten missiles, which contain Martians and the necessary equipment to build war machines. They intend to take over Earth, and exterminate all human life. They all land in the countryside adjacent to London, and begin their violent attacks from there. This is told through the eyes of an unnamed narrator. I wonder what Wells's intention was, in not naming his narrator? We're with him through most of the book (besides the chapters that follow his unnamed brother)...I found it annoying. I mean, if a reader is meant to sympathize with a character's plight, some emotional connection should be established. There are times when the whole unnamed narrator thing works, and this wasn't an example of that. When the narrator and his wife are reunited in the end, after four weeks apart and worrying that the other one was dead, I didn't really care (she wasn't named, either!). Yet the narrator, who is supposed to be writing his personal, unique account of the days of terror until the aliens perished from the strange atmospheric elements (a very anticlimactic yet maybe scientifically realistic ending), is writing as though he assumes that the reader will know who he is. Maybe he's supposed to be the author as character? But I don't know enough about Wells to care about the character in that case...

So with the lack of connection with the narrator, and the mundane descriptions at the beginning of the book, I didn't really begin enjoying the book until the narrator was really able to describe the aliens, and their effect on the small part of Earth that they were able to invade. I was especially fascinated by the descriptions of a Martian plant, a blood-red weed, that the Martians brought with them, that spread rapidly through the English countryside and London, but died quickly on Earth as the intelligent aliens did.

I also found the artilleryman's predictions of a world ruled by Martians to be interesting. He, observing that the aliens were capturing people for food, felt that they would capture and breed humans, not just as food, but as pets. He also expressed ideas of forming an underground network of humans, only the ones who were physically and mentally superior, to eventually find a way to fight back against the aliens while living like rats. Certainly, this idea has been expanded on in other science fiction works.

Wells is one of the few authors to begin the science fiction genre, and though I didn't find the characters in the story to be particularly compelling, it is fascinating how the works of today can be directly traced back to this. If anything, I'm glad that I read this book just for that reason alone. As I write this post, I am listening to Orson Welles's interpretation of The War of the Worlds, the famous one that freaked a bunch of people out in 1938, on the YouTube app on my iPhone (okay, I have to admit, I've spent time playing games on my phone when I could have been reading). He has the invasion happening all over the United States, rather than just in one concentrated area in England. If aliens ever do arrive, in peace or otherwise, I wonder where they actually would land? Would they even be able to navigate that well? But then, in order to answer those questions, we'd have to be able to answer the big one: Does life really exist on other planets? At least, any life worth contacting? Maybe there isn't ever going to be a way of knowing. But the idea of it still captures the imagination, and undoubtedly, the genre of science fiction will only continue to evolve.

"Is there life on Mars?" Well, yes, I believe that microorganisms were discovered there at some point? But it's not really anything worth noting...

A famous image of Orson Welles performing his take on The War of the Worlds. Another creative genius who met a tragic end.

Book #47: How I Live Now

Book #47: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

September 2, 2013


Second entry today, though I wrote about The Fault in Our Stars in the wee hours of the morning before going to bed, and I spent most of my afternoon reading How I Live Now. It was necessary, since I needed to have it read for my class tomorrow. When I'm done with my post, I still have two chapters left to read from the textbook. I'm glad that my homework time will double as reading time, though I don't know how much I would recommend this particular book.

The instructor for my course vaguely explained the premise of the novel, so I went into it pretty blind. So here's the gist: Elizabeth (who is called 'Daisy' for some reason) is an anorexic American teen. She's suffering from some serious mental issues, as is revealed throughout the book. She started starving herself because she was afraid that her stepmother was going to poison her or something? Her mother, who was British (I think maybe Daisy's dad was English, too, but it doesn't say for sure), died birthing her. Daisy has always labeled herself a 'murderer.' She is a self-mutilator, too, and has seen many psychologists and specialists over the last few years. Her father and stepmother seem to have given up on her, and have shipped her away to stay with her maternal aunt in the English countryside.

So far, it would seem that the story would be another angst-driven teen adventure. I've read such books before. But there's a major twist here, that steers the whole course of the story. England is on the cusp of war, and Daisy's parents send her there with that knowledge. In fact, it seems that by the end of the story, the entire world is at war. Obviously, that would make this a sort of modern-time alternate universe, but with what's been going on in the world over the last few years, it may not be that difficult to imagine. In the first few weeks of Daisy's stay with her cousins Piper, Isaac, Edmond (with whom she has an INCESTUOUS RELATIONSHIP...uh, yeah, there's that) and Osbert, the country is invaded by "terrorists." The terrorists are not described by their nationality or by their skin tone, it's only said that they don't speak English all that well, so the author leaves it pretty open as to who, in this alternative universe, is turning on each other. The "why" isn't too far from the "reasons" for the wars going on in real life, but that's not really delved into.

Anyway, England is invaded, the borders are closed off, and Daisy's aunt, who is in Norway or something, is stuck abroad while the children are alone. The three younger cousins and Daisy bond (and obviously, Edmond and Daisy bond too much...what the hell? I don't see how these two cousins, her fifteen and him fourteen, banging each other, enhances the story, unless it's supposed to be some sort of Lord of the Flies message?). Daisy is actually happy, for the first time. But I don't understand why it couldn't be enough for her to be happy with the familial love and acceptance that she finally found with her cousins, and why the incest was necessary. But regardless, the children aren't really directly affected by the war, until British soldiers show up and sequester their farm. The kids are separated; Daisy and Piper are sent to live with an army family in another village, and the twins are sent to a farm (Osbert enlists). Much of the story is Daisy and Piper's experiences. As they witness violence and try to make their way to their family with meager supplies and a map torn out of a book, Daisy at least comes to terms with her eating disorder as she works to keep herself alive.

They arrive at the farm where the boys were staying, but find only dead bodies. Isaac and Edmond are not among them. The girls make their way back to the farm. Then, the story abruptly ends with Daisy getting a phone call (unexpected, as all of the phone lines and electricity hadn't been working) from her father. It then jumps ahead a few years, to war-torn England, when Daisy, who was brought back to the United States under an emergency medical pass or something (even though she never lapsed back to her anorexic habits) is finally able to return to England. She finally reunites with her cousins, who all survived the war, but Edmond is traumatized, and angry at her for leaving him. At the end, Daisy, who was once so broken herself, is working to help Edmond. She once felt that he could be the one to help her, I felt. Yet they were both so young...and they were cousins!

Now, the text implies (or rather, Daisy's own perspective implies) that her cousins are "magical" in some way. Like that they have powers of mind reading (she even imagines, or feels, that she and Edmond are sending each other psychic messages to each other when they are far apart); also, that Isaac and Piper have powers of nature, and can talk to the animals or understand things about the outdoors or whatever. Osbert is not possessed of these magical powers, apparently. And yet, these ideas are not developed, and ultimately, they don't seem to make a difference in the fate of the children (except that the twins' premonition about an attack on the farm at least kept them alive). I felt that way about much of the book, that it was undeveloped. Maybe if I had more, the incest between the two cousins could be justified in some way. As is, I don't buy into it all.

This book is bizarre, and not really in a good way. I could see teenage girls of certain inclinations having some interest in it. I certainly wouldn't see myself teaching it in my own classroom. The discussion over this book in class tomorrow night ought to be interesting. I'm not going to condemn it completely, as it is certainly a unique story, and that's more than can be said about much of the dreck that teens are drawn to (as previously stated, I like YA lit when it's good quality, but I've had enough book talks with teens about series that were only written to be massively produced and to rake in some quick dollars). It presents some interesting questions. It's way out there...maybe it would be a stepping stone for a sophisticated young reader to more complex literary works.

Frank says: "Banging your cousin is perverted, Daisy!"

Ding.

Book #46: The Fault in Our Stars

Book #46: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

September 2, 2013


My list is going to be a little young adult oriented for the next few months. My YA lit course is in full swing already; this particular text will be one of four texts that I will be reading by choice, in addition to several assigned readings (I can slack off a little there, as I've read a few of them previously, including my all-time favorite novel, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak). I like YA lit; I gained an appreciation for it during my English methods course as an undergraduate. I've been very pleased with the enthusiasm that my current students have shown in sharing the books they've enjoyed (which will make my job much easier), so to placate them I'll probably have to read a couple of those, too. I'm absolutely fine with it, as long as these books are near the quality of my favorite, or this text in review.

The Fault in Our Stars has been highly acclaimed for the past year, and has been on my to-read list. Being in this course has given me a good excuse to read it; plus, a coworker (at a side job) loaned my a copy (I still have to get her my copy of The Book Thief, as a matter of fact). I did not find it to be as flawless as the aforementioned, but it was still a powerful, original, well-paced text, with intriguing characters.

This is a book about dying teenagers. Sick kids. Hazel has been suffering from cancer that has made her lungs almost useless. She constantly takes oxygen, and cannot be without it for more than a few seconds without suffering. She's come very close to dying, but during the events of the book, she's a bit more stable. At 16, she has been out of school for several years, has gotten her GED and started attending college courses. But she doesn't strive too hard to have a normal life. She knows that she is not normal. She reflects, in the book, that she'd like to just keep completely to herself, only spending time with her parents, because she doesn't want to be a "grenade." She doesn't want to hurt too many people when she dies (and of course, her loving parents will not be immune to suffering no matter what). But then, in her precarious condition, she falls in love.

I'll be honest in my assessment of the characters, because I feel like they would have respected that to some extent. I found them a little pretentious. Hazel is smart...Augustus (her boyfriend, the "great love of her life"), writes in a letter (to someone else) that she is, basically, smarter than everyone else. I wonder, if Hazel coming so close to dying has given her some kind of cynical maturity, or has given her depth that her healthy contemporaries would lack, or if she was always that way. That isn't to say, that I didn't like the characters. Hazel and Gus seem like good kids, and I like that they enjoy reading (even if they indulge in trash)...they are so passionate about one book, about a teenage girl who dies of cancer, that they travel all the way to Amsterdam to speak with the author, who has since become a reclusive alcoholic.

I saw Gus's death coming from a mile. See, he was the supposed "healthy" one at the start of the relationship. He'd come with his friend Isaac to a support group that Hazel's mother made her join. Isaac was Hazel's only friend in the group, as cynical as she at times. He was about to lose his only good eye to spreading cancer, and would be blind. Gus's cancer had gone into remission, or maybe close to it, after his leg was removed. He'd once been a basketball player, but after becoming sick and knowing that he would lose his leg, he reflected on how stupid it was in the large scheme of things. So in Gus's case, his personality and life view was largely shaped by his cancer. Well, I mean, duh. It was an interesting contrast, after his death, as Hazel read through the posts on his Facebook, old friends leaving comments about him shooting ball up in heaven. Hazel was annoyed at how shallow it all was. So really, Gus's experiences had given him depth. Even his parents, nice enough people, come across as shallow (at least in Hazel's view) in their talk of heaven and angels, and the inspirational shit all around their house.

Around the time of Gus's deterioration (because the cancer ended up spreading all over his body) and death, Hazel struggles to try to break away from her parents. It's not really that she wants to have an independent life, because it seems pretty clear that it would be impossible. Rather, she wanted her parents to have independent lives, and when she learns that her mother, who had dedicated her life to taking care of her sick, only child, was a few months away from a master's degree, she was relieved. She didn't want them to fall apart when she was gone. In contrast to Gus, who had fantasies of dying a heroic death, she wanted to die as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. She didn't think she was anything special in the grand scheme of things, though the few people who really stuck by her certainly though highly of her. And maybe that's enough for anyone.

Certainly, it's that sort of feeling that the author's Dutch assistant was hoping to inspire in him by inviting Gus and Hazel to speak with him. Peter Van Houten had only written the one book, and had fled the US to his family's native country, where he was slowly drinking himself to death. I could also predict that he was going to be a dickhead from a mile off. I was pleased with how that storyline ended, with Hazel telling him off, even after he'd traveled to the US to attend Gus's funeral and to try to apologize. She called him as she saw him, a pathetic drunk who had wasted his potential. He'd had a daughter who'd died of cancer at a very young age, and the grief had killed him. He was both a very wise and very foolish man.

I appreciated that the author did not spring the death of Gus onto the reading in the end, as a "twist" or something. I felt that it happened in a realistic way. I think that Green was attempting to tell an honest "cancer story," and in that, I think he succeeded. The ending of the story isn't exactly hopeful; Hazel will die, sooner or later. She'd been afraid to get involved with Gus because she thought her dying would hurt him, because his last serious girlfriend had died of brain cancer. He admits to her that he stayed with her for so long because she was dying, and he didn't want to be the asshole who broke up with a dying girl. Even as her brain fell apart and she became insufferable, he didn't want to hurt her. That was honest, too. He goes into the relationship with his eyes wide open, knowing that Hazel could die and it would hurt him, but they are so simpatico (they really are, they're so in love with their own cleverness and they just banter on, it's entertaining at times and cloying at others) that he is willing to risk the pain. In the end, Hazel is the one left alive and hurting, but she knows in the end that loving Gus and knowing him, for who he really was (what the cancer had made him...or perhaps what the cancer revealed?) was worth the pain.

At times, the writing is so poignant and beautiful. I found that this was in sharp contrast to Green's description of the kids playing video games. A couple of those scenes went on a little longer than necessary, though the description of Isaac's verbal game (which he played after losing his eyes, obviously) was very interesting. I was almost ready to write off this book after the first of those scenes. I was also ready to be annoyed when Gus had a pre-death funeral (with only Isaac and Hazel as speakers), as it reminded me of Tuesdays with Morrie, which is probably one of the worst books that I've ever read. But Isaac just rips into Gus (in contrast to his short, honest, and heartfelt speech at the actual funeral), which was funny, and made me reflect on how different this novel is from the terrible, terrible book that I was forced to read as a freshman in my first education course. I found Tuesdays with Morrie to be full of trite cliches about the "beauty of life," and all the crap that Gus and Hazel would scoff at, rolling their eyes and sighing deeply. And yet, even for their dismissal of all the sentiments of dying and the noble fight against cancer, they are honestly afraid of dying. In spite of some of the book's flaws (such as dating itself with pop culture references, a terrible habit of YA authors; or the editors missing that Gus's mother is called by two different names in the book...is it Cindy or Emily, people?), this is one YA novel well worth the read. I can understand the accolades, and I would say that they are well-earned.

I was going to put up an image of the original, as it's what Hazel wore on her shirt during her visit in Amsterdam. That's the kind of humor or logic that Hazel and Gus appreciate, while Hazel's parents don't necessarily "get it." I thought that the Mario reference added an extra nerdy touch.

This is where, in the book, Hazel and Gus have their first kiss. Seems strange, but hey, Anne Frank was kissed here, too...