women’s issues – Peaceful Reader

Found this in my draft box and it's too good not to still share: National Book Award Finalist; Louise Erdrich

I ordered this book for my mom for Christmas (hello, mom) and while it sat on my present shelf it spoke to me. “Read me” it said as I would pass by the shelf several times a day. So I did. I pulled it down and started to read. The fact that I finished it all has to do with how good the story was. While I read the book I posted several times how much I was enjoying the book and my mom kept texting me “I want that book!” I couldn’t say to her “I know you want that book; that’s why I got it for you for Christmas!” but I am saying that now in my blog post as the book is now wrapped in pretty green paper and on its way to you. Merry Christmas Mama. I previewed the book for you and yes, it is a wonderful story.

The Round House

Louise Erdrich

2012

317 pages

Synopsis

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe’s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

The story is told from Joe’s point-of-view which makes it so much more heart-felt. Within the first few chapters Joe’s mom changes from the happy mom, ready with dinner, holding the family together kind of mother. The kind of mother most of us can relate to and then quickly she is the opposite of that as she lays crumpled in her bed unable to recover from the attack.

This story gives the reader an inside look at life on a reservation; the daily ins and outs as well as the way tribal law works. Bazil torments Geraldine with questions of where, where, where did the attack occur even as she is unable to talk about any of it to her family. His sole purpose is to decipher if the attacker can be prosecuted. He wants to know so he can solve the crime and she can’t tell as she does not want to relive even one second of that moment.

Joe tries to help with his mother, by tending to her, but she slaps him once as he tries to wake her and that moment he is scared for what the future holds for his family. Joe shifts his attention to trying to stay out of the house, away from his mother. Filled with great minor characters, like Sonja, his white aunt, all trying to help Joe in one way or another. The story shares a few jagged twists that eventually feed us and Joe back to his mother. There is hope that their family will prevail.

From a female perspective this story tells a crushing tale of male dominance in our society as a whole. Erdrich’s story shows us how a native woman has even less of a chance for salvation through the courts as Geraldine’s attacker was aware of the complexity of tribal law. Salvation must come through by other means then and that in itself is its own difficult journey as Joe shares with us.

My strong empathetic feeling toward native tribes and the terrible way in which Europeans and then Americans have punished this indigenous group was newly shocked as I learned through Erdrich’s details. Just as books that relay tales of slavery and civil rights help us to understand life as a Black American so to should this book teach us to understand the plight of American tribes.

Quote:

“How’s your mom doing? she said, shaking her head, swiping at her cheeks.
I tried to focus now; my mother was not fine so I could not answer fine. Nor could I tell Sonja that half and hour ago I’d feared my mother was dead and I had rushed upon her and got hit by her for the first time in my life. Sonja lit a cigarette, offered me a piece of Black Jack gum.
Not good, I said. Jumpy.
Sonja nodded. We’ll bring Pearl.” (26)

It is always refreshing when a book is awarded a high honor and it is truly good; good for regular people to enjoy. Thank you to Louise Erdrich for writing such a human story. She owns a lovely little book store in Minneapolis, Birchbark Books.

Celebrating Eleanor Roosevelt on International Women's Day

It’s wonderful to have a day to celebrate women and won’t it be great when we can celebrate accomplishments like equal pay. It seems crazy to me that this is still an issue. Why don’t women get paid more when we DO more? It’s not enough that we hold down full-time jobs and do them amazingly and then go home and throw together a healthy dinner that appeals to all members of the the family. My family. It’s not easy. We have to worry about sick kids, paying bills, staying safe, and making people happy.

It’s a lot to accomplish.

Eleanor Roosevelt, one of my female heroes, is someone who accomplished a lot and was always a beacon for women’s issues. She was born in NYC, the niece of Theodore Roosevelt, who lost both of her parent’s at a young age. She was sent to England for schooling and it seemed to cure her shyness. She married her distant cousin Franklin and they had six children. She was a busy housewife but she made time during WWI to work for the Red Cross.

Franklin contracted polio in 1921 and Eleanor stepped up and assisted him with his political career. She changed the role of First Lady as she fully involved herself in press conferences, spoke out for human rights, women’s issues, and children’s causes. She had her own newspaper column and worked with The League of Women Voter’s. All through Franklin’s presidency she worked for change. Upon her husband’s death she said she was done but went on to work for the United Nations. She helped to craft the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she considered to be her greatest achievement. She died of cancer in 1962-the year I was born.

We’ve had amazing advocates like Eleanor so what’s the hold-up on women’s issues? My answer is too many men making laws/rules.

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton Disclafani

Synopsis:

It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrian boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships, the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is far remove from the free-roaming, dreamlike childhood Thea once shared with her twin brother on their family’s citrus farm-a world that is now lost.
As she grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, and what they will mean in the grand scheme of her life and her relationship with her family, Thea also finds herself enmeshed in a new order at Yonahlossee. Her eyes opened for the first time to a larger world, she must navigate the politics and competition of friendship as well as her own sexual awakening, and come to an understanding of the kind of person she is-or wants to be. Her experience will change her sense of what is possible for herself, her family, and her country.

What I liked: The mountain setting is as beautiful as Thea’s look back at her life in Florida and her family stories. I enjoyed learning more about the Depression from this unique viewpoint as a few of the wealthy young ladies were affected and were forced to leave the camp. I enjoyed Thea’s love of horses and riding. Disclafani’s distinction of “bad girls” vs. “boys will be boys” was well played and reflects what still exists today all though probably not AS bad. I enjoyed the twist of how her notion of what was originally meant to be punishment turns out to be her saving grace.

What I didn’t like: Thea was a tough character which made it hard to love her. I can’t say more without revealing important elements of the story that are best kept secret until you pick it up to read it. While she wasn’t easy to like there was much to enjoy in this story.

A sample:

I slipped away to the barn one afternoon, when all the other girls were studying at the Hall. Now instead of bird-watching, botany, and painting we had history, literature, and home economics; math and science didn’t seem to exist in this mountain enclave. We didn’t have much homework, either, or nothing that took very much time. I like literature, unsurprisingly, taught by bland Miss Brooks. She became impassioned, though, when referring to books she loved, and watching her I sometimes thought, isn’t that always the way? A dull girl charmed by a book? (119)

Find her here Anton Disclafani’s website and on twitter.

Celebrate Women's History Month

Did you know that March is women’s history month! We have a whole month to celebrate. My son would be shocked by this as March means basketball! Crazy. I could put together a bracket for him with important women he should know-he might absorb the information better that way.

Tomorrow (Saturday) I will be featured at Kidlit’s blog, which has featured a variety of inspiring posts about women. I chose to write about Joan of Arc as I had been recently inspired by this movie starring Leelee Sobieski. Joan was an amazing young women and accomplished much in her short life. Tough having your life cut short by 44 men looking for a reason to get rid of you. Sadly women in today’s world continue to be mistreated based on what we wear and how we act.

My husband, a peaceful man, says it’s part of man’s nature to be a conqueror and that some men just can’t grasp woman as a person instead of an object. Maybe a drug could be invented to make men more docile and thus able to work and understand women without objectifying them. Would it work? Please click to Kidlit and read my post and all the others who’ve been featured this month. A heartfelt thank you to Margo and Lisa for all the work that goes into each post.

I recently finished up I don’t know how she does it by Allison Pearson, which delves into the work force mentality because Kate spends her days working at breakneck speed as a Hedge fund manager surrounded by men who cast disparaging comments around like bait, hoping to either further their career or at least to demean the woman sitting next to them. Look forward to my upcoming review of this still-timely book but in the meantime go read about Joan of Arc, a young woman juggling kings, priests, angels, her family and a sword.

Happy Friday! (oh, Spring Break, where have you gone…)

Abraham Verghese's Cutting For Stone

When my book club chose Cutting For Stone I was interested in the Ethiopian setting. Something about this east African country has always been a bit of a mystery for me. As I child I spent time in a large Midwest hospital and my two young female roommates were from Ethiopia. We didn’t speak the same language but we smiled a lot and shared toys together. One was younger than me and one older and I often wondered where their lives took them after they flew back to Ethiopia so this book had extra appeal in transporting me to Addis Ababa in the first half of the book.

Verghese’s story revolves around Marion and Shiva, born from a young Indian nun and a surgeon she meets on her journey from India to Africa. Through circumstances Sister Mary Joseph Praise flees her original post of Aden and remembers Thomas Stone and Missing Hospital, she makes her way to Addis Ababa. There they quickly become a symbiotic operating team as nurse and doctor, working together for 12 years.

Sister Mary Joseph Praise dies during childbirth and Stone, filled with grief, leaves Missing hospital never to return. Hema, another doctor at Missing and close to both Stone and Sister Mary Joseph Praise, takes the twins under her wing immediately after their unusual birth. Marion and Shiva, raised at Missing by Hema and her companion, Ghosh, grow up immersed in medicine and follow the path of not only their adoptive parents but their birth parents as well. Their story twines around the political climate of Ethiopia as Haile Selassie as ruler is deposed and other more cruel leaders take his place. During the Eritrean revolt Marion, due to unforseeable events, leaves Ethiopia for the United States.

My Thoughts: The first pages impressed me with Vergheses’s fluid language. Actually I had to look up a few words while reading. It took time to find interest in the characters and the beginning seemed slow. Sister Mary Joseph Praise’s compassion for nursing and humanity carry the story and even though she dies during childbirth she drives the remainder of the story. Thomas Stone, on the other, hand, did not impress me until later in the book when you hear his experiences as a child and you get a deeper look at what made him tick. Marion and Shiva seem to follow the same path as Marion is more compassionate and Shiva, blunt and factual. I loved Matron and Ghosh and thought Marion and Shiva were blessed to have such unique and loving parents. The stars just align that way sometimes.

First lines:

“After eight monthes spent in the obscurity of our mother’s womb, my brother Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths at an elevation of eight thousand feet in the thin air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia.” (3)

and my favorite sentence:

“Outside, the rain had scrubbed the sky free of stars; the black night leaked through the shutters into the house and under my blindfold.” (259)

In a nutshell:

Title: Cutting For Stone
Author: Dr. Abraham Verghese
Publication date: 2009
Pages: a whooping 658 but the acknowledgements after are worth reading.
Genre: Historical Fiction (1947-)
Topics: dictatorships, human rights, third world heath concerns, women’s rights, poverty and the medical field
Five Stars
Purchase at an indiebook store near you by clicking here…Cutting For Stone