History – Page 4 – Finding My Wings

Kelli Estes tackles 1880s racism and violence

IN A NUTSHELL

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes (Sourcebooks, 2015)
In 40 words or less: Parallel stories of a young Chinese woman in the 1880s a modern young woman, determined to find her calling are brought together at her family’s century-old island home.
Genre: Fiction with historical underpinnings
Locale: Seattle and nearby islands
Time: 1886 -1895 and the present
Read this fictional account to spark your interest in the truth about the expulsion of the Chinese in the northwest.

In the 1840s the U.S. was in desperate need of laborers to support the mining camps and build the railroads. Chinese men were welcomed along the West Coast for this express purpose. So long as they were not integrated into the communities and didn’t take “American” jobs, they were tolerated. By the early 1880s organized efforts began to undermine their ability to work and to send them back to China, preferably at their own expense.

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk opens on one of the most horrific days in Seattle’s history. Armed mobs are entering Chinese enclaves, kidnapping the residents and looting their possessions before taking them to the docks. Mei Lien, her father and grandmother operated a small store. Understanding the danger for young Chinese women, her father has had her live as a young boy and kept her by her grandmother’s side and in the store. After a violent confrontation, they are placed on a ship, allegedly to be sent to China. Late that evening, Mei Lien overhears the ship’s captain planning to throw all the people overboard to their deaths. After sharing this information with her father, he decides she must be saved and pushes her over himself, in the hope that she can swim to shore and be saved.

Inara Erickson is the youngest child of a prominent Seattle shipping family. Having just graduated from college, her father is “helping” her find employment. A family tragedy kept Inara away from Orcas Island for many years. Her aunt’s death brought her back to the one place she felt at home. Rather than follow her father’s path, she undertook to turn the family homestead into a bed and breakfast. While uncovering the original staircase, one tread was unlike the others. Underneath the board was an intricately embroidered silk sleeve. Finding the sleeve begins her road to discovery about family, history, honesty and forgiveness.

As she went into the water, Mei Lien was seen by the local postman and fisherman. Joseph rescued her and brought her to his small cabin, nursing her back to health. Though skeptical about her story, the murmurings among his neighborhoods and in town showed her concerns to be warranted.

Not surprisingly, Kelli Estes weaves these stories together to create this novel. Mei Lien’s story is fascinating and tragic. Her isolation as the only survivor from her family and prey to the racism in the community is heartbreaking. Island life was difficult at that time under the best of circumstances. Inara’s story has the clichéd elements of true love at risk due to family skeletons. But by having the modern story Estes is able to provide broader historical details on Mei Lien’s life through Inara’s research using the vast resources of the internet. The present day story also offers the opportunity for restitution and reconciliation.

Kelli Estes deserves a lot of credit for bringing the anti-Chinese riots and expulsions to a wider audience. Mei Lien, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, is a wonderful character I won’t soon forget.

‘TRIBE: On Homecoming and Belonging’

IN A NUTSHELL

TRIBE by Sebastian Junger (Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2016)
In 40 words or less: An outgrowth of a June 2015 article on soldiers’ PTSD long after leaving the battlefield, Junger posits what is it about modern society that has created this problem. Using recognized research and his observations, Junger provides food for thought.
Genre: Nonfiction/Anthropology
Time: 300 plus years of communities
Read this for an interesting take on the how individualism and independence may leave our society vulnerable to depression, PTSD and other problems.

Sebastian Junger is a familiar name to many for his book The Perfect Storm about the New England fisherman caught as three weather fronts came together in 1991. His writing is fiercely analytical, bringing together the individual, societal and (in that case) climatological factors that marked that tragedy.

Junger spent time embedded with troops in Afghanistan. As a journalist, filmmaker, and long form author, he was struck by the strong bonding of military units regardless of the ethnic, racial, intellectual and social differences that might divide in other environments. Junger saw wounded soldiers desperate to return to their units rather than to be sent home. Many of the same strong and courageous individuals had severe and long-lasting difficulties reintegrating upon returning home. TRIBE is his effort to understand why.

This brief book, less than 140 pages, refers to dozens of psychological, sociological and anthropological studies, business and newspaper articles on the evolution of tribal and group behavior. The primary exemplars are tribes, going back to ancient times through early America, who’s communities were completely interdependent with well-defined communal roles. His contention is the superiority of this model is reinforced by the resistance of captured American settlers to return to their communities, often fleeing to return to those who had been their captors.

Junger asserts that that interdependence is seen in military units and that the loss of it causes/exacerbates reintegration difficulties. On the civilian side, he suggests that this lack of fundamental purposefulness contributes to some instances of depression, abuse of medical insurance and other behaviors. As evidence, he shares data that suggests catastrophes such as 9/11 resulted in reductions in suicide and symptoms of depression. Rather than turning inward, people reached out to help others both selflessly and to fulfill a need to contribute to making society whole. In my opinion, his assessment might also be worth looking at in terms of gang members and those who have been incarcerated.

This is not an academic treatise nor does he proport to be a scholar. Having said that, I’d recommend it to those who study societal dynamics, social workers, and particularly those involved in the serious problem of appropriately training our military and reintegrating them into civilian service. Even if he isn’t spot on, his work provides a starting point for discussion.

My to-be-read list is summer ready!

Ahhhh! Even if your student days are far in the rearview mirror, somehow summer has its own unique rhythm. Now’s the time to change your reading horizons in all sorts of ways. Grab a book and head to a park bench at lunchtime – your desk can manage without you. Try out an audiobook for that road trip. Negotiating a title with your fellow passengers may introduce you to an author or genre you’d never have selected on your own.

For me, summer is the time to queue up books that take me to another place and time. Last summer, two particular titles really fit the bill. The Truth According to Us, Annie Barrows’ novel of small-town West Virginia in the summer of 1938, just out in paperback, has an enticing combination of family drama, labor unrest and explication of the New Deal program that brought writers to small communities across the country to preserve their histories.

In The Oregon Trail, Rinker Buck brings the reader along as he and his brother follow the trail from Missouri to Oregon using equipment and tools of 150 years ago. Buck, a seasoned journalist in the midst of a personal crisis, decides this is just the change he needs. As a child, he and his siblings were taken on unusual journeys by their father, an accomplished, loving but difficult man. Needing another skilled horseman for the trip, Buck invited his brother who was dealing with physical and emotional problems of his own. Not particularly close since childhood, the extraordinary physical challenge of the undertaking tested and strengthened their relationship.

Page after page, the reader joins them on the trail, often within spitting distance of 18-wheelers. Along the way they take meals and spend the night with locals in small towns across the route; on farms, in dying communities set aside after an interstate usurped their role as staging point or provisioners. They meet old-fashioned craftspeople that keep their rig going when repairs are beyond their skill. Weather, rough terrain, exhaustion, and injuries leave them minutes from abandoning the quest. It was a joy to accompany them from the air-conditioned comfort of my home!

So what’s on the list for this summer? First up, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, Chris Cleave’s latest about Europe in 1939. Mary North takes on the task of teaching students that were not accepted in homes in the countryside as most children were sent for safety from London. Tom, charged with supervising the school, and Alistair, Tom’s best friend now serving as a military officer, both fall for Mary.

On a more serious note, Tribe, Sebastian Junger’s assessment of the damage we have brought on ourselves by loosening the communal bonds of society. He contends that combat veterans overcome their fears and insist on returning to their units after injuries because of the tribal ties they create. Junger suggests it is the breaking of these bonds that fuels PTSD.

Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, 2012 National Book Award winner, is one of the finest novels I have ever read. Her latest, La Rose, is another family-centered novel of contemporary Native American life with a storyline drawn from tragedy. Erdrich brings a unique perspective to the complexity of the tribal and state justice systems. Snagging a copy of La Rose at the library was a real coup!

Another Louise is near the top of my TBR pile. Louise Penny has created the magical hamlet of Three Pines in Quebec. With an assortment of quirky locals, poor internet and cell coverage, a cafe, bookstore, and a B and B, it is the perfect retreat except for the occasional murder. Chief Inspector Gamache is the warm, intuitive yet analytical detective who uncovers the culprits and the underlying stories. Through the course of the Three Pines series, his wife and his second (now his son-in-law as well) add a comfortable and familial tenor to the stories.

Now that I’ve shared the top of my pile, I hope you’ll do the same. Please go to the bottom of this post (on the website) and click on COMMENTS so that I (and others) can see what you are reading. I’ll keep sharing if you will!

The fascination with Shylock

Whether you are someone who seeks out Shakespeare’s work or is uncomfortable with the language and cadence, Shakespeare’s stories and words permeate our culture. Few of Shakespeare’s characters evoke such strong feeling as Shylock, the titular character in The Merchant of Venice. When first performed over 400 years ago, Shylock was the personification of all the prejudices about Jews – clannish, money-grubbing, dirty, ugly, sanctimonious – the list goes on and on. In different eras and in different cultures, Shylock has at times received more nuanced and sympathetic treatment. Luminaries of stage and screen have taken on the role, each giving it his own take.

This year there are two very different productions with Shylock at the forefront in the Washington area. This past week, a new play based on The Merchant of Venice has been staged at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. District Merchants by Aaron Posner, brings the story to Washington in 1873, a time of great political and economic upheaval immediately following the Civil War. The Folger’s strong reputation and Posner’s skills in rethinking the work of others on the stage encouraged us to see the production. In one word GO!

The massive pillars that filled more than half the set served two purposes: first, a reminder of Washington and the fundamentals that created the US, tested by the Civil War; and two, it effectively brought forward and contracted the size of the stage, increasing the interplay between the actors and audience in what is already an intimate venue. The quintessential issues of justice and prejudice, family and peoplehood, generosity and greed flow naturally through this retelling. Each of the eight cast members lived his/her character. The melding of Posner’s and Shakespeare’s words was completely successful. Whether the Shylock’s story is set in the 16th, 19th or 21st century, its power remains the same.

For traditionalists, in late July Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour will present The Merchant of Venice at the Kennedy Center. The show is advertised as “..this new production of Shakespeare’s play dramatizes competing claims of tolerance and intolerance, religious law and civil society, justice and mercy.” Isn’t it always so?

Were this not enough, there is a new version of Shylock’s tale for those who prefer the armchair view. The Crown Publishing Group’s Hogarth Press has commissioned the retelling of eight of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays by some of the world’s most renowned novelists. British novelist and 2010 Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson was chosen to tackle The Merchant of Venice. His novel Shylock Is My Name was released in February. I’ll go out on a limb and predict at least one of my book groups will tackle it during the 2016-17 season. Watch this space for my assessment.

For the Anne Tyler fans out there, her take on The Taming of the Shrew will be published tomorrow. Vinegar Girl, set in contemporary Baltimore, should be a great mashup, proving again how modern masters can bring the timelessness of Shakespeare to today’s audiences.

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story

IN A NUTSHELL Unknown - Version 2

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story Matti Friedman (Algonquin Books, May 2016)
In 40 words or less: Friedman shares both his personal and journalistic views of Israel’s experience in Lebanon in the 1990’s with the outpost called Pumpkin as the focus. Heart-wrenching and informative, it reminds the reader that history happens one person at a time.
Genre: Narrative history/memoir
Locale: Israel/Lebanon
Time: 1994-2002

Two years ago I first learned that Matti Friedman’s next book would be about the little-mentioned experience of Israeli soldiers in outposts in Southern Lebanon. These fortifications and their platoons were protection from Hezbollah incursions into northern Israel. This is a personal story for him – it was in the Pumpkin that Friedman served during his time in the IDF in the late 90s. Pumpkinflowers goes beyond his story to tell of those who came before him, their families and friends, and of the women whose outcry led to the abandonment of these positions on the hills.

In Israel, all but the ultra-Orthodox are obligated to serve in the military. Leadership is cultivated early and the bonds of service continue beyond the time in uniform. Israel is a small country so troops are rotated from post to training with frequency and weekend visits home are a part of the culture. And when there are casualties, each wounded soldier (flower) or death (cyclamen) is a collective sorrow, invariably a distant relative or friend of a friend’s cousin.

The early days of the Pumpkin are given life through Avi, a writer by temperament, who was sent with his platoon to the Pumpkin in 1994. Friedman uses diaries and letters, interviews with Avi’s parents and others from the platoon, to paint the picture of life on the hill. Friedman lays out the routines, the boredom broken by fear when trying to ascertain whether a shepherd is merely looking for lost sheep or is actually a threat. The platoon members are from different backgrounds, religious to completely secular, though all are schooled in the Biblical history of the land. They are at the cusp of adulthood, intrigued by popular culture, keeping in touch with their friends, trying to figure out what is next.

Access to the outposts was difficult and troops were often conveyed by helicopter. In February 1997, poor weather conditions contributed to a tragedy that changed the direction of Israel’s defense in the security zone. Begun by mothers, slowly but surely pressure to bring the soldiers home from the outposts began.

And it was after this that Matti Friedman, at nineteen, was sent to the Pumpkin. Only after telling the story of the early years does Friedman share his experience.

Well-conceived narrative history can bring breadth in a very compelling way. In Pumpkinflowers Matti Friedman gives life to the Pumpkin and to the terrain that the platoons are charged with protecting. The difficulty in defending borders when combatants look just like their neighbors. The combination of bravado and naiveté among the IDF’s soldiers, and a country where each casualty is a tragedy within the family. Friedman also lays out the politics and resistance.

In the end, it is a very personal story, incomplete without Friedman’s visit back to where it all began. After the Pumpkin was the temporary home to too many young men lost, it is now a hill with scars. And the view remains essentially the same as it has for thousands of years.

Pumpkinflowers is well-documented and tightly written. Covering a rarely discussed period of Israeli history, this book is important for the gap it fills and the manner it which it is addressed. As he says, this period is the beginning of a new type of warfare in the Middle East and Hezbollah was its start. This book has appeal for readers of all genres and will be a great source of discussion.

Matti Friedman is a journalist and author. His 2012 book, The Aleppo Codex, was awarded numerous prizes, including one which afforded him the opportunity to turn his attention more fully to his experience in Lebanon. Friedman continues to write both narrative journalism and opinion pieces.

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