Gina Harris's Blog, page 97

Children's books: Pura Belpré Award winners

The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.

http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal

You may be thinking that it would make a lot of sense to have looked up this particular award in September, National Hispanic Heritage month.  The idea is sound, but here is where I admit something embarrassing: I thought I was looking up the Schneider Family Book Awards, the category below it on my list.

Both awards are given - along with many others - through the American Library Association, so the first parts of the web address were the same. I was typing in a bit and looking to type more, and it was easy to get confused.

As it happens, the first book title I saw was Lucky Broken Girl, which could easily have fit into both awards. I did start noticing that the theme seemed different than what I expected, but I was requesting books as I looked them up. By the time I figured it out I just went with it.

Eventually I hope to have explored many categories, and it may not be in a completely logical order. I remain uncommitted to exploring diverse erotica.

Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar was the children's book. Parents are very frustrating in this book, and also sympathetic and loved, just like in real families. The protagonist herself does not always take being confined to a body cast well, nor the therapy that comes after, and that may provide some relief for young readers who struggle with their own obstacles. Some of the language is sometimes stilted, possibly an effect of attempting to portray non-native English speakers.

Picture books

The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes by Duncan Tonatiuh

La Princesa and the Pea by Susan Middleton Elya and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

I did not love the stories for these two. The first is an adaptation of a legend about the creation of two mountains, and the second is a version of a fairy tale that is not my favorite. They are still worth checking out for the gorgeous artwork.

Martinez-Neal takes her inspiration from different regional costumes of Peru, and since we are in Peru adds in guinea pigs for good measure. Tonatiuh's work is inspired by Aztec art. Both make good use of color, and are fascinating to look at.

Referencing something that exists visually already but may not be familiar to children leads us to...

Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos by Monica Brown, illustrated by John Parra.

As luck would have it I had just finished an art class that talked about gender and art, and spent some time on Kahlo and her use of animals in her art. That class went against the idea that the animals were substitutes for her children, which this book kind of perpetuated (that may be a long-standing orthodoxy). Regardless, it was wonderful to learn more about her history with her animals, to know that you can still go to the house and see the pyramid that she had Rivera build for them, and to appreciate the way Parra reminds you of Kahlo's art, opening the door for young readers to appreciate it. As they get older there will be so much more to it than cats and monkeys. Definitely recommended.

All Around Us by Xelena González, illustrated by Adriana M. Garcia

The most interesting thing about this book is that while it focuses on circles a lot, often only part of the circle is visible - not all of the connections and cycles are in view, but they are still there. That works well for a book on inter-generational relationships. That also leads us to...

Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina, illustrated by Angela Dominguez

True confession time: I had an aunt who would sometimes visit from Italy. I loved her but I would also get frustrated with another person in the house, and the language barrier, and the different ways of doing things. (I was more appreciate and mature by the time I started going to visit her and disrupting her household.) As the protagonist learns to adapt to her previously unfamiliar grandmother coming to live with them, I related to that. There is also a nice nod to the importance of pets.

Obviously I liked some of the books better than others - that's just inevitable - but I can see any and all of them inspiring good discussions, and being good reading experiences.

Band Review: Treading Paper

Treading Paper is a solo project from Michael David Miller.

Despite his background in punk music, Treading Paper is something much more mellow and fluid. At times it sounds religious.

Without being completely acoustic, the sound is stripped down, focusing on melody, but with strummy accompaniment.

"Cessation" was my favorite track, but it also had the fastest tempo and the most complex accompaniment. "Danny" is more typical.

There are currently no shows listed, but the web page does indicate that a new EP will be released later this year.

https://www.treadingpaper.net/

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrPunkdude3456

https://twitter.com/MichaelMeraki

Band Review: Na Unt?

I am actually not positive that is the right title. There does seem to be a band called Na Unt? (German for "So What?"), and one of the members seems to go by Mister Tetzentheil, though I don't think that is anyone's last name. But Mister Tetzentheil could also be a band, maybe.

Some of the confusion may be that I don't speak German, but I swear the page layout just changed. I can no longer find the songs today that I have been listening to this week. That being said, the Twitter profile refers to ska, punk, and comedy, and I am not sure I found any of those things.

I guess the lyrics are kind of punk, but the music seems slower and less aggressive. Some of the background accompaniment could be kind of ska.

Ultimately, I do not feel qualified to do this review. Perhaps things would have become clear with one more listen, but the confusion could have remained; I have no idea.

I do remember a strong feeling that the recording equipment could use an upgrade. It felt like the vocals and instruments don't balance. However, I also remember once mentioning the muddy recording quality to a friend back in college regarding his band's first demo, and it turns out that was on purpose. (It was the early '90s, and there was some musical trending in that direction that I was not aware of.). It got kind of awkward. Anyway, I think Na Unt? might want to try backing up from the mic, but I acknowledge that it could be on purpose.

So - just to be fully clear - I am not giving this band a bad review. I am withholding a review because I don't know what I am listening to. It's not completely satisfying, but it will have to do.

https://mistertetzentheil.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDCzd6blNRcZVRHb0xZcidw

https://twitter.com/mister_tetzenth

Three for the Fourth

I know, yesterday was three more things, but that was a group of three things that I need to work on. Today is more about three random things that I should get out of the way, and then move on and keep going. That being said, two of them are about difficulties in moving on. Maybe all three are.

One thing is frustration with my desk and dresser. I have always had a tendency toward clutter, which I am not proud of. As things have piled up on me and my ability to get through them has diminished, I have a network of piles of books and mailings and notes about things to do. Redundancy is an issue; I am on my 7th foreclosure notice. I guess that means they have no confidence in registered mail, or me. (Probably me.)

I had felt like I couldn't get started on other things until I could really get to the bottom of this clutter. It appears all this does is prevent me from starting on other things. I have been knocking bits of it away, but my grand idea for just focusing on a giant push through so it is gone was never realistic. It wasn't even that glamorous a fantasy! Instead, opportunistically, when I have a few minutes I grab a few things.

Overworked, overtired, but persistently working my way through, but not letting that reality keep me from other things -- that is what I need to accept. Moving on.

I have also been a bit stymied with what to do with the blogging. There were things I knew I wanted to blog about, and other things that seemed to need it. I hate the lack of order, but they all blend together messily anyway. If I am concerned about political discourse and situations in the world, they often relate deeply to what I am reading and why.

I just finished my 2018 Black History month reading. I am still working on the post-inauguration reading that I started in January 2017. I hope to finish by September, but there are no guarantees. I believe that Monday and Tuesday I will cover some children's books, Wednesday I will summarize the Black History month reading that was not picture books. Then, as I get into additional detail on some of the books in the following weeks, maybe that will give me the path to talk about other things. It will be messy and without clearly-defined boundaries, but maybe that's just life.

Which leads to the third thing.

I have enough problems in my own sphere to keep me plenty busy, but the pressures of the rest of the world are felt too. They are felt hard.

They are often felt worst by those who are trying to help and make positive changes. There are policies that make things harder, attitudes that make abuse more prevalent, and caring even when you are not directly affected can be overwhelming. There have been some notable suicides, but there are also ones that probably aren't noticed. There have been attempts.

That can be really easy to get mired down in, and I am not in this post going to tell you anything to fix it. I just ask that we be kind. Keep an eye on people who might be struggling, whether you know them or not. A small bit of kindness can still be enough to get someone to the next bit.

It was not that long ago that I tried to really make a point of keeping in touch with the people I cared about. Then the world crashed down. I am lucky that there are people who keep track of me. I can try and be better, but my point is that it takes everyone.

You do what you can. You may save lives. You may save your own soul.

Don't give up.

Three more things

I knew if I didn't post before I left for my eye exam today, the day would get away from me. I didn't, and it did. Still, today's post should be pretty simple.

Around October 2015 I was writing about problems and wants that I had and things that I needed to do, and I shared that and started working on those things. It certainly was an outgrowth of the Long Reading List and other things, but it was also its own phase. Some good things happened as I worked on it.

It is an amazing thing to like myself now. Although I needed to get past believing that there was something inherently lacking in me, figuring that out didn't automatically change the feelings. That took some time. Given that time, though, I have grown. While there has definitely been growth during this time of unemployment and care-giving, there are also parts of it that might have been impossible without what I had already done.

I have also found some improvement in family relations, which is not only dear to my heart but at times seemed impossible.

When my computer died and I lost all my data, that included the spreadsheet where I was tracking my progress on those specific areas. I have not been able to completely recreate that, but I know that there are three specific areas that I still had to work on. Those are the ones that are firmly in my mind. They are the ones that I know I need, and so I hope they might be the ones that allow me to move to the next phase of my life, which I hope will be the phase with less poverty.

There is always some fear, because one big source of stress is my mother's condition, and there is pretty much only one way for that to end. There are no happy thoughts there. It is easy to get stalled on that. If I am perfectly candid, part of what made the difficulties mentioned yesterday so hard was that along with the time needed for regeneration I also needed some time to grieve. She lost some ground after the hospital stay, and some of it doesn't look like it will be coming back. That always requires some adjustments to our routines, but also it requires some time to mourn a little.

I suppose one of the key growth areas required has been learning that there are things that I can't fix, though I had gotten really used to fixing things and taking care of things in my life before. I can be grateful for the good that has come through this, and I will learn to be grateful for what comes, but I know there are hard times ahead, and I am not at all eager for that.

Nonetheless, there are those three things that I know I haven't really gotten to yet, and I can be eager to do those, and believe that good things will come from them.

One is driving. I will not be able to start on that for about two weeks most likely, but the last time I was working on it, I was doing pretty well, so maybe the loss of two weeks won't matter. There were times when I thought it would be okay to only have my permit and be comfortable driving, but I probably just need to go ahead and get my license.

I also need to finish transcribing my mission journal. I am not going to go back and recreate what I already did, because I still hope that some day data can be recovered off the hard disk. Maybe the point isn't so much to have it as just to have written it. Anyway, I'm going to do it.

Finally, there is that focus on health, and meeting my physical needs, which is so much a part of the self-care.

As I think about the stress, I keep wanting to go for walks outside and meditate, and then not leaving myself the time. That needs to change. I have been getting in short meditation sessions for the last few days, but my walks have all been kind of accidental, like missing a bus and just walking to the train. I would like to be more deliberate. Mindful, if you will.

I have this notebook for the caregivers program that is a 6-week program, so if I go through that, and work on the journal and practice driving over the next six weeks, then I feel like something else will come clear. I will know what to do, or something will happen. This has always been based on feelings anyway. (Feelings that read a lot.)

Anyway, that's what I'm going to be working on. If something interesting happens along the way I may write sooner, but I'll write on August 15th with an update for sure.

One more thing about the concert (I did miss a bus that night): the last song was "Ten Minutes". It repeats several times "Everything will work out". It doesn't mean that in the context of the song, because he is asking how she can say that, but that night, after an emotional roller coaster, I took it that way, and I still am.

Besides, he says she is always right in the song too. Sure, I think he means that she always acts like she is right, but the failure of the boyfriend to see the girlfriend's rightness should not necessarily be accepted at face value.

Here we go again

I'm a bit disappointed in myself.

I wrote less than a month ago about realizing the need for self-care and balance, and trying to work on that, and I am still stuck there. Let me back up a little.

Longtime readers may remember that latent in my body is an old infection that will spring back to life if my immune system takes enough hits. Back when I was still learning how to deal with it, any illness at all would bring it back up, but I have successfully navigated several illnesses without it.

The past three months have just been a lot. I was getting through them pretty well anyway, but I started feeling the warning signs last week and really started worrying. It wasn't just a fervent desire to not get sick - though that was real - but also that I had things I really wanted to do coming up. I had a concert Wednesday night (both reviews last week mention my trying to take it easy at the concert) and then Thursday I was supposed to visit Fort Vancouver with a friend.

I worried about both of them. As I try to find this balance, I see three things that I need that it is easy to skimp on.

Good nutrition and water intake is important, but because I cook for my family and try to keep them healthy too, and because my water consumption has become pretty much a matter of habit, those things more or less work out for the most part. I have no guarantees on sleep, alone time, or social time. If I get low on any of them - and especially on all of them - I start feeling frayed and weepy and the worse the need gets the harder it gets to even be able to identify a plan for mitigating the need.

(Logically I probably should always start with sleep, because it requires the least planning, but it can be hard to sleep when you are feeling all drawn out.)

It had started getting better with some friends coming through anyway, so I'd had some social time. but at that point it felt kind of too late. I had these two things that I very much wanted to do, and that would give me new interaction and blogging material, and I was scared to go.

I ended up splitting the difference. I went to the concert but stayed seated and was not at all wild. It was still a late night, but worth it. The words and music are still running through my head. I canceled my Thursday plans, and focused that day on trying to get better.

That remedy is rest, with lots of leg elevation, and lots of water (more than usual), along with not much in the way of carbs. It's not as relaxing as it sounds, but it was less so this time because Mom needed so much attention.

With the Norovirus, she was asleep during my worst symptoms (3 to 6 AM), and she had just gotten out of the hospital and wasn't particularly energetic herself. She is feeling a lot better now, so has more energy, but doesn't know how to direct it without some guidance.

That is what I am here for, and while it does have its frustrations it generally works out. We do not have a sick days process in place.

My thought at the time was that clearly I cannot be sick and take care of her, so I need to do whatever it takes to not get sick. It shows a charming naivete about how much is in my control.

I cannot tell you how many people have told me that when you are a caretaker you need to take care of yourself. I haven't argued with any of them, because I know they're right, but no one tells you how to do it. They probably don't know. I surely don't.

So yes, I am still working on trying to take good care of myself, which I have learned how to do for pretty much everyone but me. Oddly, my response ended up being more work, which sounds like I haven't learned anything at all, but I think I know what I'm doing. Somewhat. I'll write more about that tomorrow.

Also, the house is in foreclosure. I think it will be okay, but I don't know how that one is going to work out either.

Concert Review: The Get Up Kids

The Get Up Kids' Portland show sold out in two weeks. This may give you an approximate idea of the crowd. (Doug Fir Lounge capacity is 299.)

They opened with "Action & Action", which felt perfect, and then it just kept getting better.

Singer Matt Pryor had expressed some reservations about the venue's suitability for a rock show. There are ways in which the Doug Fir feels a lot like a basement, though it has a much bigger bar than even the best-equipped suburban rec room. One attempt at crowd-surfing turned out to be ill-advised, but there did not appear to be any permanent injuries.

(Personally I love the decor, but the lighting is terrible, and if you look at the photos and wonder why I even bother, sheer obstinacy, I guess. Plus love for the band.)


Ultimately, the rock worked out. The band knows what they're doing, the audience was receptive, and a good time was had by all.

Given the size of the band's catalog, they clearly didn't play everything, but it still managed to feel like they did. Nothing was missing.

Ryan Pope's drumming made me especially happy; I don't know why. In the past when this has happened, it has always been drummers with Italian last names (Ronnie Vannucci Jr., Roxy Petrucci), but I guess "Pope" is Italian-adjacent.


(Jim Suptic is really in most of these pictures, I just couldn't get a good focus on him. It was touch and go with Rob Pope.)

I appreciate that while the band clearly do not take themselves that seriously, they take the music really seriously. Specifically I always learn new things from watching James Dewees play.

I don't know that I would say it was a better than the 2015 show at the Hawthorne Theater. There was a kind of a cumulative effect between all of the bands that night that created its own energy. Wednesday night felt more intimate, perhaps because of the smaller size, and maybe the amount of friends and family in the audience. Doug Fir feels like a family place since the last time I saw Matt Pryor there anyway.

(And maybe I felt less of the energy because I was staying on the sidelines trying to not push my body into relapse too. I mean, that could have been a factor.)

It was nonetheless an excellent experience. The Get Up Kids are on tour through most of July, but if you want to see them in Portland, keep an eye out for when sales start and buy early. Or maybe they should get a bigger place. Either way.


http://smarturl.it/kicker

https://www.thegetupkids.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TheGetUpKids

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDnNtREEWYJs3RiRc7oFR2A

https://twitter.com/thegetupkids

Concert Review: The Casket Lottery

I had not previously been aware of The Casket Lottery, until this tour. I started listening to them this week in preparation for the show, but I'm sure I'm still missing a lot.

I did find it cool to have two bands with Kansas City roots touring together, and they got a strong crowd response. They may not have been the headliner, but they clearly have a strong fan base in Portland.

While looking into The Casket Lottery I found this description on their Facebook page:

"bummin' you out since '98"

That earned a laugh, and a thought of how emo it is, but while it would be easy to hear the music and be bummed, it would still be an exaggeration. It's not just that the band has fun between songs, but there is a lot of range in their overall body of work.

Possiblies and Maybes, from 1999, takes interesting curves, perhaps justifying it's title. "Myth", from their 2012 split with Touché Amoré, is beautiful and intricate and clear proof that there is more to The Casket Lottery.

So I wasn't that bummed out.

The Casket Lottery has one date left with The Get Up Kids (this review is from their Portland performance last night at the Doug Fir Lounge) in Salt Lake City tomorrow night, and then a 20th Anniversary party in Kansas City July 7th.

Constant bummer or not, it's still an anniversary.

https://www.facebook.com/The-Casket-Lottery-193550150664833/

https://twitter.com/casketlottery98?lang=en

(Pictures are worse than usual, even for me. I am trying to stave off collapse by exhaustion, so I stayed on a bench on the sidelines for the entire show. Remember, I wrote about being old for this four years ago: http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/02/your-aging-concert-correspondent.html)

APAHM 2018 reading and the Asian Pacific American Awards for Literature

Last month I read an interesting thread on libraries and diverse books:

https://twitter.com/TirzahPrice/status/998569959281385473

I mentioned the Ontario Library Association list, and she was glad to hear about it, but also pointed out that these books really aren't that hard to find. The problem tends to be a lack of interest. She was terribly right.

Oddly, that made me feel that I need to keep reviewing these books and making a bigger deal of the groups that award them. Maybe it isn't so much illogical as that I hope in my own way I might help generate some interest. Also, maybe every time I see that our library system has these books, that's a good sign. Maybe if something is missing, I can gift it.

Anyway, this time the books are from The Asian Pacific American Awards for Literature:

http://www.apalaweb.org/awards/literature-awards/

The goal of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature is to honor and recognize individual work about Asian/Pacific Americans and their heritage, based on literary and artistic merit.

Most groups award one picture book a year, possibly with an honorable mention, so I usually go back a few years, until I get at least five. Without realizing it I got a children's book - not a picture book, but one with chapters - into the mix, and it seems right to keep that up.

Picture Books:

Puddle by Hyewon Yum - This one is pure fun, with a rainy day leading to a kind of bratty mood, but all that mood needs is to embrace the rain. Well, there might be some mischief in that too. At times the artwork practically leaps off the page to pull the reader in.

The Nian Monster by Andrea Wang, illustrated by Alina Chau - This is a good introduction to Chinese New Year traditions. The story is a little cutesy, but there are some lessons in needing to continually adjust, and also in seeking help from the community and working together.

Juna's Jar by Jane Bahk, illustrated by Felicia Hoshino - By total coincidence I read another book about a friend moving away, Jane Clarke's Gilbert the Great, around the same time. This one handled the emotions a lot better, although Gilbert being a shark may have affected that. Both are reassuring that eventually you make new friends, but the issue of finding comfort with the loss, rather than just moving on to the replacement, seemed like that would make Bahk's book more helpful for thoughtful children.

A Different Pond by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui - There is a lot of melancholy in this book as a refugee family resettles, but sometimes that sadness is real. This book can be helpful for that. I mentioned yesterday the emotional impact of the non-fiction books; of the children's books, this is where I felt that the most.

Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl's Courage Changed Music by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Rafael López - The artwork is pretty imaginative for how it conveys what is real and what is dreamed, and also for how it conveys the musical elements.

Set in Cuba, it might seem to have come from the wrong list, and I think it received some other honors as well. As it is, the book is based on the true story of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a Chinese-African-Cuban girl. I have also recently learned that many Jews fleeing Europe went to Cuba, though many had to flee again after Castro. One thing these books can do is remind us how much different people get around, which leads to our final selection.

Children's Book:

Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh by Uma Krishnaswami - There was a time when many Sihk and Muslim men from India came to the Americas to work, and then were not able to bring families over. Interracial marriage was outlawed in California, but the Indian men were allowed to marry Mexican women, leading to many families sharing two cultures.

That is a factor in the book, as well as how the tensions of WWII can strain the community relationships, but really, the book is about Maria's love for baseball, redirected into softball, but still facing some obstacles with learning how to take coaching, how to interact with her teammates, and how to work with her parents so that they can be happy with her participation.

I was talking to a parent recently who was shocked at some of the heavy topics that end up in books for fairly young readers (about fifth grade in that case). What I immediately felt strongly - and told her - is that when they encounter heavy issues (and they will, long before fifth grade for lots of kids), those books will gave them ways of thinking about things, and being able to communicate about them. I hope it will help them find ways to cope.

Reading children's books again after a long time, I was caught off guard by the immaturity of the characters, but that's real. These are the ages when all the often embarrassing but really needed lessons happen, and when you do start to grow up.

It is vital that many different children can see themselves inside these stories.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2018 reading

As committed as I am to the concept of these months, my execution may miss the point. For example, Grace Kelly is an American artist with Asian heritage. However, Chillitees are based in the Philippines, and RiL seem to be based in Japan. Shing02 is a transplant to the US, but as much as Kitcha sounds like he is from the US, he seems to be operating in Sweden.

One issue with that is that there aren't that many Asian-American bands. The Slants call themselves the only Asian-American dance band, and if they took off the "dance" they might still have a point. I might focus on bands with Asian-American members at some point, but also I worry that if I focus on splitting hairs too much, that it could go wrong in a different way.

As it is, my book selection could be questioned as well.

River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma by Thant Myint-U

Bamboo Palace by Christopher Kremmer

Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora by Andrew Lam

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge by Chanrithy Him

The first two are histories, specific respectively to Burma and Laos. The second two books contain personal experiences from authors who were displaced by war and did end up coming to the United States, although in Chanrithy Him's case, the book is mainly set before she comes to the US.

(Also, Thant Myint-U was largely raised in the United States, with his family being based here after his grandfather, U Thant, went to work for the United Nations.)

If I were thinking about trying to know more about the specific topic of the month, it would make sense to read about the annexation of Hawaii, and the Chinese Exclusion Act and the building of the railroads. I'm sure I will end up reading more about those.

Instead, these were books that had been on my radar, and largely because of my mission.

I served with Lao refugees in Fresno and Modesto. It was over twenty years ago, but the memories are still warm. I met many Cambodian and Hmong refugees. I did not meet many Vietnamese, but a good friend of mine in junior high was, and then Burma, Vietnam, and Cambodia all bordered Laos (along with China). There was a map that a lot of the Lao families had on their wall, with the countries and the different groups in them.

(The only Lao joke I know is "How many legs on a Burmese chicken?" It's a pun because the word for Burma sounds like you are saying "man, horse", so with a chicken and a man and a horse it is eight legs. It's funnier in Lao.)

Yesterday I wrote about why there is value in reading about other countries, and I stand by what I wrote. In addition, lots of them have had to come here. That would give them a part in US history, even if we were not often a large part of the reason they had to come.

It touched a lot of tender feelings. There's a part of my heart that is always going to be in the San Joaquin valley, but also a part that goes out to those countries as I think about the people that I knew and loved and what they have had to go through, there and here.

Food for thought that will continue is how important rivers have been in the history. The "perfume" in the title of Lam's book refers to the Perfume River. Before this reading, my associations were always with the Mekong, but that is not the only important river in South East Asia. When you think of agriculture and fishing and setting international boundaries and transportation, we may have gotten away somewhat from remembering how important rivers are here, but it makes sense. The Columbia and Willamette have played a huge role in shaping us here.

I will continue thinking about politeness. It seems that the strict social rules and expectations about showing emotion and affection could inhibit some important things, but then when the Khmer Rouge or the new Lao government forbids all the old signs of respect there was a lot of harm with that as well.

I have been reminded of the power of kindness, and the harm of a lack of kindness. Too often there is cruelty that seems senseless and so unnecessary, but the point was for people to die. Yes, a few small changes could have saved lives, but that wasn't what they wanted, whether they openly admitted that or not.

This obviously resonates with the current immigration discussion, but we don't talk enough about how economically destructive it is. Human suffering should be more important than money, but people should also be aware of how much the suffering will spread. It wouldn't matter if we were better people, but there's too much evidence that we aren't.

On the most personal level, the reading filled in a lot of blanks, and led me to realize that the blanks that were there were are least partly because they tended not to talk about it. Most of the information I had came second-hand. The worst story I ever read had been written as a school assignment. Some of the things that happened in re-education camps I learned from other missionaries who had been out longer. And no one talked about the refugee camps unless they still had people in them, and then it was just about trying to get them over.

There were some self-effacing aspects to their culture where it might feel inappropriate to talk about themselves. There was certainly a focus on the present and what was needed now. That's not necessarily unhealthy, but I worry about unprocessed grief now. I don't think asking more direct questions would have been good, but I wonder now if there were things we could have done to empower them more for telling their own stories.

The month did improve my historical knowledge. It also emotionally put me through the wringer. There was a family that I had kept in touch with until they moved and I did not get a forwarding address. Even the youngest would be 26 years old now. I actually do know that the father in a different family I knew has died. I have feelings.

That may be the most important part of doing this. Knowledge and context are important, but empathy is desperately needed. We do not have the only experiences worth knowing.

I will do the children's books tomorrow. I did not read any poetry. I wanted to find some of Teiko Tomita's poetry (she was a picture bride who came to the Pacific Northwest), but I didn't find any collections. Poetry in this case might require anthologies or online sources.

For comics, I read the first volume of Monstress by Marjorie Liu, and I caught up on the Amulet series, reading books 5, 6, and 7.

I'm glad I stuck with the Amulet series. I wasn't sure after the first one, but I have come to really appreciate it. Monstress is a little dark for me, but it was stunningly gorgeous. I know I will want to check out more of Sana Takeda's book.