Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 40

Movie Review: The Wife

This movie was a little reluctantly recommended to us at a writing group meeting, maybe a year ago. It’s been on my to-watch list, and during a recent temporary subscription to Starz, I noticed it was on there and took advantage of an evening by myself. (What?!? Oh, the few up-sides of pandemic life.) At least I think it was a reluctant recommend. If I remember correctly, the viewer had their reservations about how it dealt with the writing life.

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Which is usually my central question when I watch a move that features a writer: how does it deal with the writing life? And this one is a mixed bag. While the movie is more about ambition and marriage, it uses a Nobel Prize-winning writer and his wife to do it. There were some things about it that were really interesting, like the glimpse into what it must be like to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, from the phone call to the ceremony to the schmoozing and interacting with the public, press, and all those people! Even the rock star status, which is something I have never thought about. What might be some negatives to winning this most coveted of prizes? What might go into getting it? Then again, though it was imperative that the writer win this prize in order to make the plot work, it is yet another movie (or book or TV show) about a writer who has succeeded against the odds and has had a very successful career. In other words, while interesting and perhaps inspiring, we’re still not seeing what the life of a normal writer is like. I mean, all this guy had to do was find the right partner and great writing spouted out and landed with all the right publishers and his writing changed the world. It does happen, but for once I’d like to see a more broadly experienced story about the writing life.

The truth is, as started to say above, this movie is much more about relationships and human nature than it is about the writing life, even though it features the writing life more prominently than almost any movie I’ve seen. It’s about aging. It’s about marriage. It’s about ambition. It’s about talent. It’s about dominance and submissiveness. A little bit, it’s about parenting or being parented. What would you do for success? I can’t say too much about this movie, because its gimmick is largely in the unraveling of the plot which, at times, is surprising. Let’s just say that it explores a darker side of humanity, despite the fact that the-worst-of-these keeps trying to reassure us that they have done nothing wrong. The real beauty in this movie is in the shades of gray, the shades of emotion, the shades of morality, which couldn’t have happened without the stellar acting. You’re almost lulled into discovering what has really happened and who these people really are. You almost lose your sense of right and wrong before you finally come to yourself, the frog already boiling in the pot. Again, I can’t discuss the ending for fear of ruining the movie for you. Don’t expect it to be super exciting, but it is superbly acted and pretty darn thoughtful. (There is one subplot that I thought was quite unnecessary and also I thought in one respect the acting of a particular emotion was too underdone. (Again, can’t say how.) There is also a quite uncomfortable sex scene right at the beginning, though funnily enough—as much as this movie is about sex, there’s not one scrap of nudity. I always had faith in the viewers that we could understand sex in a movie without having our noses rubbed in it.)

I have also heard that it is better the second time around, when you can watch the actors while you already know their secrets. I could totally see that being the case.

Not my favorite movie by a long shot, but I could really see using this to teach acting or story-telling, discuss ambition and deception, or just to celebrate Glenn Close.

Book Review: The Indian in the Cupboard

Sometimes themes just happen. Native American-colonist relations in the 1750s in middle grades literature is a theme that just happened to me, hardcore. As you can see, my last two reviews were Calico Captive and The Sign of the Beaver, and now I am about to review Lynne Reid Banks’ Indian in the Cupboard. I also just watched The Sign of the Beaver and The Indian in the Cupboard and called it a soft start for seventh grade. (Don’t judge. We did other things.) If you couldn’t figure it out, all five of these things are meant for middle grades and involve Native Americans in the Northeast in the 1750s. Really random.

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So the final book in this theme (at least, as far as I know) was The Indian in the Cupboard. In many ways, it is a weaker book than the other two, though I say that largely because it is not historical fiction and is not as accurate or truthful. On the other hand, it’s a childhood classic—which is maybe more children’s literature than middle grades, depending on how you look at it—and is magic realism (or low fantasy), a fantastical and imaginative story. I do wish the portrayal of the Onondaga brave and the 1870s cowboy were less caricatures, but they did have some twists of character, even if they were stereotypical (in an ignorant way) in many ways. After reading Elizabeth George Speare, I did catch the Native American behaving in ways that were glaringly wrong, but only a few times. (The movie was much worse for this. I also suspect the later titles were worse in their stereotyping, misinformation, and white paternalizing, which landed the books on “books to avoid” and “challenged books” lists.) Little Bear does correct Omri (what a name) sometimes about his misconceptions about Native Americans, but I am getting ahead of myself.

A book I enjoyed somewhere around fifth grade, Indian in the Cupboard is about a boy, Omri, who received a manky, old medicine cupboard from his older brother for his birthday. His mother gives him a special key to use with it and Omri discovers that together the two can turn plastic figurines—the kind that were very popular in the mid-century England of the book—into real, live, few-inch-tall people. Or more like it summons them from their real lives. Omri’s pretty pumped about his secret until a series of accidents and some interaction with his best friend, Patrick, cause him to realize the responsibility he has toward Little Bear and seriousness of the situation. You can’t use people.

The Indian in the Cupboard is one of those stories that immediately draws kids in with its acceptance of magic in the world and its posing of impossible—and impossibly cool—situations. Omri is a great protagonist, growing emotionally and socially by the chapter, fast on his way to becoming a good and sympathetic man. He bumps through things, like a read kid, plucking nuggets of wisdom from the world around him as he makes his own mistakes and regrets them. And he’s not the only one: Patrick, Little Bear (the Native American), and Boone (the crying cowboy) all have flaws, make a poor decision or two, and must deal with the consequences and decide to do different next time. The writing is fine. The pace and plot are on par for late elementary school.

The issue is the cultural muddle when it comes to the characters Patrick brings to life, especially Little Bear. I really saw Patrick as learning more from Little Bear than vice versa (though in the movie he much more clearly takes Omri under his wing as a developing child), but it is awkward, at best, that they end up being “brothers” and respect seems to flow mostly toward Omri while Little Bear is more, like, a neat novelty, but only to a point. I mean, the whole lesson of the novel is that you can’t use people, like I said, and Omri really begins to see outside of himself, which is developmentally appropriate. As for him being the one in control, that is normal for children’s literature, which is the place they get to be large and in charge.

The series is:

The Indian in the CupboardThe Return of the IndianThe Secret of the IndianThe Mystery of the CupboardThe Key to the Indian

I did notice some problems with the handling of the Native Americans and even the cowboy (and again, suspect they are magnified later in the series), but it didn’t seem overwhelming to me. It is a classic, a book I have enjoyed and my son also seemed to enjoy, and it encourages thought and growth in empathy and responsibility. I am happy to stop with book one, which feels like a stand-alone. I understand why many children enjoy it, but I can also understand the naysayers. With that all in mind, the decision here is really going to have to be up to you, and, as always, discuss books with your children as they read them.

MOVIE

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Number one: the soundtrack for the 1995 The Indian in the Cupboard was distractingly bad. Like so bad, that I’m not sure I could watch this movie again, even though other than that it wasn’t half-bad. Some of the plot was made more realistic (and also brought to a 1990s America) and of course shorter and more simplified. Also, some of the characters were changed, like Patrick a bit and definitely Little Bear, who went from surly, fiery, and strong to smart, calm, and relational. There were, for sure, too many long, awkward pauses which were made worse by the spotty acting of the main character. But it was fun to see the story and the setting come to life in a normal home and loving family. The kids were fairly endearing. There was some LOLing. I’m pretty sure many of the changes were made to make the Native American more complex and real and less controversial in his relationship with Omri (and others) though the portrayal still seemed chock-full of historical inaccuracies. And if it weren’t for the darn soundtrack, I would recommend it despite the fairly drastic plot changes.

Book Review: The Sign of the Beaver

If this were an adult fiction book, it would be considered a novella. At 132 pages formatted for a middle grades reader, this is a very slim novel. Perhaps that is one of the many reasons it is one of my son’s favorite books. Not that anything is missing in this novel. It’s all there: the characters, the plot, the twists, the suspense, the growth, even the laughter and tears. All there.

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A Newbery Honor book and one that is often assigned or at least suggested reading, The Sign of the Beaver was Elizabeth George Speare’s last book. Written some twenty years after her other renowned middle grades books (The Bronze Bow, Calico Captive, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond), it has a more modern flavor from the others, even though the content is still the 1700s colonial New England. It takes place completely in the Maine wilderness, and both the setting and list of characters is limited due to the content.

A man and his teenage son, Matt, have come to the northern New England wilderness to stake a claim on some land. They’ve spent the spring building a cabin and Matt’s dad will have to leave for the summer to fetch Matt’s mom, sister, and the new baby. Matt will be alone for around seven weeks, but he’s been given plenty to do—including fend for himself—and a gun to hunt with. But alone in the wild, it doesn’t take long for plans to fall apart and things to go wrong. A shady white man visits, and then a Native American “Indian” and his grandson, a boy about Attean’s age. They make a treaty with Matt, a treaty that will have a lasting impact on Matt’s life, not just because it saves it, but because it’s there as he faces new challenges and grows in one year from a boy into a man.

As I said, this is one of my son’s favorite books. It’s not just the brevity. My son favors two types of book: fantasy (with creatures) and boy-in-the-wilderness (with creatures). This book is of the second sort and takes place entirely in the wilderness. It is about a boy and is populated with creatures: a dog, squirrels, birds, bees, bears, beavers, etc. It has a great coming-of-age friendship and some great lessons, very boyish moments and observations of the world. It’s not complicated with romance or really anything beyond basic survival and the most simplistic—while also rich and deep—relationships. The writing is clear and concise, and there is some painting of the setting but is a bit minimalist for my taste. That’s the same thing with the characters, and while I felt a tiny bit surfacy and like things were moving so fast, this is Speare’s style and it has won her laurels for all four of her middle grades historical fiction books.

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I admit that the cover sort of bothers me. I mean, it’s titled The Sign of the Beaver (which is an okay, but not great title) and this title is written on the silhouette of a bear. There’s some cognitive dissonance going on there, and I know I’m not the only one who had to shake clear their head when first seeing it because my daughter had exactly the same reaction when she saw it sitting on my bed the other night. “Um, that’s a bear, isn’t it? Why does it say beaver?” Probably not Speare’s fault. But I can’t think of anything else to complain about. It’s a great book, clean and straightforward, moving and interesting, a classic.

Of course, a big theme in Speare’s writing, the reader has to come to terms with Native American-white man relations in the colonial period. At the point of The Sign of the Beaver, the pioneers are moving onto the hunting grounds of Attean’s ancestors and pushing the Natives off. The Natives are likewise moving out West, where they are told there will be enough land for all, which we know wasn’t really true, ultimately. We see this process through the eyes of two teenage boys who are both struggling to find truth and a future in a place of pain and injustice. Matt wrestles with his preconceptions, what he’s been told, and what he discovers in Attean and his tribe. It’s a great exploration, but we all know it doesn’t really end happily. At best, we hope that Matt grew up to champion the Natives and to defend them, for his small part. As for your own kid or own self, it’s more of a considering of history from two sides and hopefully a wondering about our own preconceptions about people, places, etc.

Recommend. If it’s not one your middle grader’s reading list, you might want to add it.

“He trimmed the twigs from these, drawing his knife toward his chest as Matt had been taught not to do” (p40).

“But grudgingly he had to admit that Attean had proved to him once again that he didn’t always have to depend on white man’s tools” (p49).

“Mat was minded how his mother had often looked at him, pretending to be angry with him but not able to hide that she was mighty fond of him just the same” (p103).

“How could you explain, Matt wondered, to someone who did not want to understand?” (p117).

MOVIE

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There is a low-budget movie that was made in 1999 that I plan on making my son watch with me this evening. Hopefully I’ll remember to review it afterwards.

Book Review: Calico Captive

This is my second year teaching Literature/Language to a home school co-op class of middle schoolers. Of course, last year was rudely interrupted in March by a pandemic, and this year we are going to begin on Zoom. Anticipating that I will be teaching this for three years total, I have decided to step up my performance from last year’s wide-eyed, scatter-brained (but funny) English teacher to an organized, crazy-about-language, poetry-performing English teacher. (Zoom is not going to be my friend.) The basic curriculum is given to me, but it consists almost entirely of learning to write. Which is great, but I am adding in grammar this year and also emphasizing reading, as well. To that end, I am requiring the novels and reading them ahead of the students so that I can actually teach them. Since this year my students are taking Modern World History, their Language assignments will coincide with this time period. Their first book is Calico Captive, and I finished reading it (and taking notes) yesterday.

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Calico Captive is a middle grades historical fiction novel by Elizabeth George Speare. Written in the 1950s, it takes place in the 1750s during the French and Indian War. It is based on an actual journal of a woman who was abducted by Native Americans from her home in New Hampshire with her family. The family was then largely later sold to the French in Montreal, piece-meal, and then reunited after months (or years) of imprisonment. The novel is told from the perspective of the journaler’s younger sister, who is abducted with them. She is a teenager whose thoughts are on dresses, dances and a boy when she is woken in the night by screaming and is forced on a weeks-long trek through the woods, during which her sister has the fourth of her children. Miriam greatly admires the older sister who is raising her, and is unceremoniously taken from her back and forth over the rest of the story. Miriam makes enemies, makes friends, grows considerably, and changes the way she looks at the world as she struggles to regain control of her own destiny and get back home with all of her family.

Um. I have mixed feelings about this book. It was interesting. I kept reading it, kept wanting to read it. I like history, and this book appears to be well-researched and really immerses the reader in the world. It’s not historically confusing, either, because it just gives one girl’s story and so helps the reader better understand the colonial period, New England, the French and Indian War, and interactions with Native Americans, to begin with. Then again, I’m not sure the ending is very satisfying. It’s hard to say if it’s the right ending, based on Miriam’s thoughts and actions throughout the book. I bet a lot of people would have had it end differently. Speaking of Miriam, she’s sometimes a tough pill to swallow. On one hand, I can celebrate that her faults are on display, helping us feel her humanity and our own failures, as well as watching her grow. But it’s difficult to read a book with such overt prejudices (against Native Americans, against the French, and against Catholics), even if it is historically accurate. Uncomfortable. Maybe if I had known she was going to eventually challenge some of her basic assumptions, I would have felt a little less uncomfortable. And it’s not just her prejudices that make Miriam difficult to swallow. It’s also her immaturity. Again, if I had known this was going to be a coming of age story, I would have relaxed a little bit, maybe.

I have a few other random observations: it is more of a girl book than a boy book, which I am actually happy about because the vast majority of what we read for class last year was geared more toward boys. While having an element of adventure, Calico Captive is replete with fabric and fashion, high society and even motherhood (obliquely). There’s an element of romance, too. And I was not a fan of the illustrations. While the cover is really nice, the illustrations date back to the 1950s’ publication and they have that 50s feel to them, which I thought didn’t make sense with the 1750s content or the modern audience.

So I would recommend this book. I can understand why you would assign it in a class, both to engage the kids and teach history at the same time, as well as have some discussion on ethics. It’s going to have to involve some talk about prejudice/racism and real history, but it will also immerse the kids (and yourself) in a time and a place that personally, I haven’t though too much about (as in the colonial period reservations and colonial French Canada). The writing is clean except for some old-fashioned turns of phrase, the plot pretty good except for that bit at the end that seemed not foreshadowed or not concluded well enough. You want to like the main character and she has her charms, though there are also moments when you’re not so sure about her. Maybe that’s part of the point. It’s not the fancy writing that will impress you, it’s the history-come-alive. Will Miriam choose to return to the life she always thought was her destiny, now that she could choose something else?

 OTHER BOOKS BY ELIZABETH GEORGE SPEARE:

The Bronze BowThe Witch of Blackbird PondSign of the Beaveras well as a nonfiction book about child life in the colonies and a book for adults, The Prospering.

QUOTES:

“But her thoughts could not be tucked in to sleep” (p10).

“There’s more than one way of running a gantlet, she thought. At least the Indians give you a chance to run” (p85).

“Just two steps to the mirror, but in those two steps Miriam traveled a distance she could never retrace” (p122).

Book Review: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

I read this book because my mother-in-law recommended it after she read it in a book club and then my uncle bought it for me off of my birthday wishlist. There are reasons why this book would jump out at me, anyhow: it’s about books, essentially. It is peopled with writers, authors, bookstore owners, booksellers, English teachers, and of course, books. In fact, each chapter begins with a note on an actual short story and I wondered if it would add to my experience to read these short stories as I went. Wouldn’t that make a cool book club project? Read the short story and the chapter for the club meetings? I happened to have the first short story—“Lamb to a Slaughter” by Roald Dahl—in a collection on my bookshelf, so I read it before reading the first chapter. While it still might be a good way to book-club this book, it is not necessary for reading it, or even particularly enriching to that experience. The short stories, even the notes on them, didn’t seem to enhance the story in any way. Even what the notes reveal about the plot is a little premature, sometimes.

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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (I find his name, first and last, to be awkward, by the way) by Gabrielle Zevin is basically about an old-fashioned bookstore on a small island near Boston. A.J. is the owner of Island Books (which is another strange name choice, and not the only one), a middle-aged, recently-widowed cranky-pants snob who is drinking himself into a hole filled with TV dinners and discarded running shoes. There are at least two people in his life who sorta keep him afloat until a few more wander in and we have literary take-off. For some reason, the main plot in this book is considered a spoiler, so I can’t really tell you about it, but a bookseller, a police officer, a toddler… they all enter and of course, in the end, save Fikry from himself. Believe it or not, this thin volume covers like fifteen or more years, which I think might be one of the main issues. If perhaps, Zevin had narrowed in on a more slender time frame and then given some backstory? Even a couple flashbacks? Well…

I think this book is okay. (Warning: should you think it’s going to be cozy, it totally reads that way except for the swearing and, more to the point, the extremely casual sex. Like sex actually means nothing in this book and middle-aged New Englanders fall into bed easier than the cast of Seinfeld. They also die off at an alarming rate.) I enjoyed reading it, but I was sometimes uncomfortably aware of its faults. What are its faults? It is a little corny. Some people like corny. The characters have very little physical description and then something about them comes out of the blue in like the last chapter. (How confused can we get about race in this book without it ever even becoming relevant?) The story lacks depth: it’s just too fast and slick. Likewise, the characters lack depth, at least in their relationship with the reader. The setting, too. Very quick and slick, all ‘round. Everything was very neat, very tied up with a big, beautiful bow and it was predictable enough that you didn’t even feel the tension of the struggles or pain. I didn’t shed a single tear (though I did laugh occasionally) because I wasn’t even close to being invested enough, and it wasn’t for a lack of wanting to be: the world of Fikry is a dream world for all us book nerds. And yet it was just a flippant little story, not a soul-searching excavation.

And perhaps most of all, this is the kind of book that is about a type of genius. All books about a type of genius run an especially high risk of being bad, because the author runs the risk of sounding like they are not the ones to be writing about this type of genius. Or, perhaps, any genius. I mean, Fikry is a high-level snob, so his taste has to be spot-on, and his author would have to be extremely well-read with a very wide knowledge of literature. And then Maya is a most precocious child and throw in a few professional book-nerds… Mostly about Fikry, though, I wasn’t sure I always believed the portrayal of him as a book snob of the highest order. The voice wasn’t trustworthy, to me, but I did see at least one review, I think in the Washington Post, that said Zevin was spot-on with all the titles that she throws around. Maybe I felt untrusting because of the few times the author actually explained a joke, which a man like Fikry would never deign to do, and I thought, oh no you didn’t.

While the makings of a great beach read are all there—the story itself had great twists and turns—I found it to be lacking in execution, which is awkward when the book is about books and writing. (I saw a few reviewers complain about the included short story, which was supposedly a winner of a prize, and I agree that it was… odd.) I wanted to like The Storied Life. There were some moments when I thought, “I like this book.” But there were more moments when I wondered, “Am I just telling myself I should like this book?” I loved the back side of the bookish life, the literary references, the charming New England island life and most of all the apartment upstairs from a book store!!! But in the end, all the bells and whistles, including the third-person present tense POV (!), didn’t a great novel make. And for that assessment, I would like to say sorry to my mother-in-law, who is no doubt reading this review. I certainly would have chosen this book for me too (no matter which of the six covers I saw (again, !)), because it has so much to charm and to snag all us bookish types. But for me, in a strange combination of trying too hard and not trying hard enough, it felt too thin to make me fall in love.

In the event that you want to read this book anyways, perhaps as a front for getting through some short stories in your book club, here is the list of short stories:

“Lamb to the Slaughter,” Roald Dahl“The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” F. Scott Fitzgerald“The Luck of Roaring Camp,” Bret Harte“What Feels Like the World,” Richard Bausch“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calveras County,” Mark Twain“The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” Irwin Shaw“A Conversation with My Father,” Grace Paley“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” J. D. Salinger“The Tell-Take Heart,” E. A. Poe“Ironhead,” Aimee Bender“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Raymond Carver“The Bookseller,” Roald Dahl

QUOTES:

“She is not vain about her looks and she certainly doesn’t value the opinion of Boyd Flanagan, who hadn’t really been talking to her anyway. She is just his most recent disappointment” (p8).

“He picked up [cross country] mainly because he had no skill for any other sport aside from the close reading of texts” (p47).

“A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper” (p50).

“The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.  / No, the most annoying thing about it is that he’s even started to like Elmo” (p76).

“’I’m a romantic person, but sometimes these don’t seem like romantic times to me’” (p99).

“’I’ve been a police officer for twenty years now and I’ll tell you, pretty much every bad thing in life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing” (p104).

“He wants to take a picture, but he doesn’t want to do the thing where you stop to take a picture” (p110).

“When did I get so negative?, Ismay wonders. Their happiness is not her unhappiness” (p162).

“After many years of hosting the Chief’s Choice Book Club, Lambiase knows the most important thing, even more than the title at hand, is food and drink” (p201).

“’You must keep up with the times,’ she continues. / ‘Why must I? What is so great about the times?’” (p216).

“From his point of view, the only thing worse than a world with big chain bookstores was a world with NO big chain bookstores. At least the big stores sell book and not pharmaceuticals or lumber” (p216).

 “His heart is too full, and no words to release it. I know what words do, he thinks. They let us feel less” (p250).

“’You tell a kid he doesn’t like to read, and he’ll believe you,’ Ismay says” (p254).

Short Story Review: I Stand Here Ironing

This short story is not on the list of Best Short Stories. I read it because a friend recommended it to me, since I was writing a story with a similar scope. I had presented my writing group with a rough draft of a story that takes place basically on the computer, in the space between the keyboard and the woman sitting at it. It brought to my friends’ minds other short stories that have appeared over the years, with such a limited space. Thus, I located and read “I Stand Here Ironing,” by Tillie Olsen.

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The story is stream-of-conscious, taking place in the head of the mother, as she stands ironing. It is addressed, in her thoughts, to an undefined guidance counselor who has contacted the mother about her eldest daughter, in some sort of trouble. So yeah, it’s just the mom thinking as she irons. It reminds me of every conversation I’ve ever had with myself, often while driving, after having an altercation with someone. I think of more things to say, better things, I give other people my explanation, my life story, and that’s exactly what’s going on here. Which is actually an interesting setup. So familiar and yet not really done a whole lot.

Written in 1961 and published in a book of short stories, “I Stand Here Ironing” is one of Olsen’s most-referenced stories. I am no expert on the history of short stories, but I bet this story felt more groundbreaking in the 60s. Now, I feel like it needs another level of innovation to make it a fresh story. I wouldn’t, except that the story seems to be just the innovation of it being a conversation in her head coupled with the surprise that not everything is peachy keen. Coming out of the 1950s, a woman standing there and admitting to failing as a mother, messing up her daughter, and making some really tough and unconventional decisions would have been much more exciting to the reader. Today, it reads as a little tired and therefore boring. If the language had been especially beautiful or tight or the length been truncated, the voice stronger, I might have been drawn in, but it strikes me as really standard writing. I suppose one could use this story to teach (story or history), but I fear it has become otherwise unexciting.

Book Review: Stolen Lives

Well, this has been one of those sorts of books: the kind that engulfs you and compels you to talk about it and to reference it at tea time, like “Well, at least we’re not in gaol for twenty years.” In fact, my husband has asked that I stop talking about it so that he can read it and not have every twist and turn spoiled. Not that it’s a mystery or thriller or something. Stolen Lives is the memoir of a former adopted princess of Morocco who spent twenty years in the palace followed by twenty years in a cell in a desert prison. Roughly. (That glazes over an incredible amount of detail and nuance, but that is the gist.)

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In the book, Malika Oufkir (through her writer, Michele Fitoussi) says she feels like she’s living a fairy tale in reverse, which is a very apt description of what happened. Born into a wealthy and powerful family, her father would eventually rise to Morocco’s number two, the famous General Oufkir. But when his first-born, Malika, was only something like five years old, she caught the attention of the king and he demanded (because kings only demand) that she become his daughter and be raised alongside his own, same-age princess. Malika was then unceremoniously ripped from her growing family and kept for the rest of her childhood in the many houses, palaces, and villas of the king, often in the sizable harem where the concubines helped raise her and the princess. She was always mischievous and rebellious, and she was out of the palace as soon as she could be, which was in high school. After a few years of fast, high-society living (which was most likely destined for the screen), General Oufkir took part in a failed coup and we have the second half of this backward fairy tale: Malika, along with her mother, siblings, and two house servants/friends, were carted off to the middle of the desert and essentially left for dead. The next nearly-twenty years were a combination of prisons, at first worsening and then—seventeen years later—bettering to house arrest after a dramatic, incredible escape. The Oufkirs spent years away from the sun, in isolation, starved, with zero medical attention, in a hole of a prison because they were related to a man who had already been executed (officially, committed suicide) for his crime. The world never came to their rescue. They had to come to their own.

It’s a pretty amazing story, which is why I keep talking about it and why my husband wants to just read it for himself. If you read it in a public place, you’re going to want to nudge the person next to you and say, “Listen to this…!” or “Can you believe this…?” Published in 1999, Stolen Lives was released in French and then shot to popularity in English with its inclusion in the Oprah’s Book Club. I read it way back then, when it was super-popular, which is how it came to be on my shelf. I picked it up recently because the title seemed like maybe it was about trafficking, but then I remembered what it was. Might as well re-read it and give it a review.

Speaking of trafficking, having recently read a couple books on human trafficking I wondered if slavery would be mentioned in the memoir and how it would be handled. According to what I’ve read, Morocco is one of, or the only, country where old slavery is still practiced (or was in the past decade or two), though the government hides it. Oufkir does refer to it, off-handedly, a couple times, which I was a little relieved to see but also would have loved some more compassion and insight into the situation. Given how old and ingrained the system is, though, I didn’t really expect her to join an anti-trafficking club in high school, or something. I also found it wheedingly odd that the mug shots in the center of the book did not include one of the women who went into prison with them. It makes me wonder if that woman was a slave, though Malika never refers to her that way.

Politics are also oblique in this book. I understand Malika not wanting to go into the politics. For one, part of the point is that she is not political which is why it’s absurd she was a political prisoner for twenty years. Also, she is telling this story from the perspective of a daughter, not a political commentator. And lastly, her hands might be a little tied about the politics, considering she is basically an enemy of the state. (Plus, it’s a little confusing when your dad is on one side of a coup and your adoptive father is on the other.) But it does feel strange to read this book without the whole story of the politics. You can Google her dad and find out more on Wikipedia about who he was and what his position was than the book ever says. I get the whole leaving your kids out of your work, but Malika’s removal from it seems extreme, especially when it was to shape her entire life. (By the way, the book was banned in Morocco,  but I read somewhere that it is not anymore.)

As for the book itself, it definitely could have been written better, though it may never have been: the author made it seem like Malika wouldn’t have opened up to just anyone, and writing the book took sacrifice from both narrator and writer. It is pretty matter-of-fact and occasionally stalls in an uninteresting spot or doesn’t follow an especially interesting bit. It really is a super fascinating story but the writing is only okay and the voice of the narrator, which I believe is Malika’s, remains a bit disdainful and out of touch even though she’s been through an enormous ordeal and has grown and, in some ways, broken. It’s like she’s lived the life of a princess and the life of a prisoner, but has no experience in between and that makes for a very imbalanced perspective. Not that I’m saying it’s not a perspective worth hearing, but it does still contain this note of derision, somehow. Perhaps that pride is what saved the family, or maybe it was the humor or the talent. Or Mother Mary. I don’t know, but it’s still hard to believe that they all survived and their crack-pot escape plan actually worked. I’m most surprised that this memoir has never been turned into a movie. Maybe Morocco would fight it.

I would recommend this book, but not based on its literary merit. Not even because of its wisdom. I recommend it for its peek into lives in another place, another time, and in a very thin slice of the population. I recommend it because it is a nail-biter and a spouse-exclaimer. I recommend it because there are prisoners—some of them political, some of them innocent—rotting away in bad prisons across the world, and most of those stories don’t have any sort of fairy tale ending. It’s a voice of decadence and wealth and power, a voice of Morocco, and a voice of suffering and injustice, and as far as I can tell, it’s all amazingly true.

QUOTES:

“How can anyone appear normal after such suffering? How can they live, laugh, or love, how can they go on when they have lost the best years of their life as a result of injustice?” (p1).

“At the same moment she is a child, a teenage girl and a mature woman. She is all ages rolled into one, but has not really lived through any of them” (p3).

“Whom do you love, whom do you hate, when your own father attempts to assassinate your adoptive father?” (p4).

“Malika is a wizard at the humor that enabled the Oufkir family to survive” (p5).

“Did my mother cry until dawn, as I did? Did she open the door to my room from time to time, did she sniff my clothes, did she sit on my bed, did she miss me? I have never dared ask her” (p20).

“’A person is judged by their manners, not by their learning’” (p24).

“I learned to read between the lines and to make caution a rule and a secret weapon” (p58).

“He had the intelligence not to mix up his children with politics” (p71).

“He’d rather see me smoking than listen to me lying to him” (p73).

“I dreamed of a normal life but I had no idea what that meant …. I took everything for granted, money, luxury, power, royalty, and subservience. The people around me were so eager to please that even if you had black eyes, they would compliment you on how blue they were if they were ordered to do so” (p75).

“What do young girls dream of? Most of them dream of love. I dreamed of stardom” (p76).

“Only now am I just beginning to live, on the verge of old age. It is painful and unfair. But today I have a different attitude to life: it can’t be constructed from superficial things, no matter how attractive…” (p79).

“Pain gave me a new life. It took a long time for me to die as Malika, General Oufkir’s eldest daughter, the child of a powerful figure, of a past. I’ve gained an identity. My own identity …. It’s as well to make the best of things” (p79).

“I gradually realized that things weren’t so black and white, with goodies on one side and baddies on the other” (p82).

“I remained detached. That phrase, ‘my father’s dead,’ was meaningless. It made no sense. I needed proof” (p92).

“If he were dead, I’d be able to tell. Something would have changed outside” (p93).

“I didn’t understand. But was there anything to understand? We were entering the realm of the irrational, the arbitrary. This was a country where they locked up young children for their father’s crimes. We were entering the world of insanity” (p103).

“In the desert, all that suddenly seemed so ludicrous” (p106).

“We even bred scorpions and organized races. / I was living a fairy tale in reverse” (p106).

“I organized toad races and farting contests, which made them shriek with laughter” (p109).

“This prophecy helped us hold out for twenty years” (p114).

“My own father had tried to kill my adoptive father. As a result he was dead. It was a tragedy. My tragedy” (p114).

“The child, who had turned eight on 27 February, the day after our arrival at Bir-Jdid, was at the end of his tether. / Shortly after our arrival, he tried to kill himself” (p141).

“We’d invent a fantasy life for him and we’d get him to believe in it” (p142).

“I lived with a permanent fear in the pit of my stomach: fear of being killed, beaten or raped, fear of constant humiliation. And I was ashamed of being afraid” (p143).

“Our main enemy was time. We saw it, we felt it, it was tangible, monstrous, threatening. The hardest thing was to master it” (p147).

“I insisted we take a pride in ourselves so as not to lose our humanity” (p149).

“Hunger humiliates. Hunger debases. Hunger makes you betray your family, your friends and your values. Hunger turns you into a monster. / We were always hungry” (p150).

“I can still picture Mimi, sitting up in bed, picking off the little black droppings sprinkled all over the bread with the delicacy of a duchess, before raising the morsels to her lips” (p152).

“Then, I could have made anything out of a piece of cardboard. Now, I wouldn’t know where to begin” (p154).

“At the end of the day, I felt exhausted from having given them all my energy. But how could I refuse, given that they were my entire raison d’etre?” (p155).

“I went on telling it night after night, for ten years, just like Scheherazade …. I had reinvented the radio serial” (p155).

“We could all have died twenty times over, but every time we emerged again unscathed from the numerous illnesses we contracted in prison” (p159).

“The Palace received reports of our dignified behavior. Our haughty attitude meant that we were standing up to the King and that we refused to accept the punishment he was inflicting on us. / It was a deliberate choice” (p168).

“We were gradually moving away from the world of the living towards the realm of shadows” (p169).

“The despair accumulated during those fourteen terrible years, exacerbated by our physical and mental decline, turned into collective hysteria …. Anything was possible: murdering a sibling, suicide, or blowing up the prison with our butane cylinders. / We all wanted to be the first to take the plunge” (p180).

“That night, we had all crossed over to the other side. I don’t know what strength, what instinct, what energy, impelled us to survive” (p181).

“We were staking our lives, double or quits, and the feeling was intoxicating …. I no longer felt the breastbone I’d cracked during the digging, which was agony when I breathed or bent down” (p188).

“It was rather a determination to survive that gave us each the strength of ten” (p194).

“Myriad details that I had never been aware of in my previous life jumped out at me: the apartment blocks like rabbit hutches, the vacant stares, poverty, exhaustion, needless stress” (p202).

“Abdellatif was fascinated by the animal, for he had never seen a pet dog before. It was playful little cocker spaniel that licked him and stood on its hind legs in excitement. My brother was torn between delight and fear” (p205).

“To our dismay, Abdellatif was an enfant sauvage, a wild child, bewildered by the avalanche of new experiences and sensations” (p208).

“’We didn’t need muscle,’ Soukina finally burst out …. ‘To escape, all we needed was fifteen years in prison, fifteen years of inhuman suffering, fifteen years of starvation, cold, fear and deprivation. And as for intelligence, you gave us all those years to nurture and develop it’” (p251).

“Battling against the dread in the pit of her stomach, my sister remained very polite” (p251).

“I… ate non-stop,… vitamins… medicines… exercising like mad …. I followed this strict regime for two years, but I remained in a dire physical condition for a long time” (p259).

“Despite my thirty-four years, I was still no more than a very young girl with a desperate need for love” (p260).

“Soukina took him aside and asked if her suicide could help secure our freedom. Since our aborted departure on 27 October, she had been obsessed with this idea. Maitre Kiejman sighed, then carried on railing against a regime that crucified innocent children” (p267).

“He missed the opportunity to write a properly researched book, and that upset me much more than all his misinformation. There was so much to disclose that he should not have contented himself with reproducing hearsay. The truth would have amply sufficed to bring down the despot” (p271).

“The sky was bluer, nature came back to life, our appetites returned. Our senses sharpened. I now saw life in Cinemascope, and no longer on a tiny screen” (p274).

“For years, time had just flowed by, it had no meaning for me, and I no longer knew how to organize it …. I have difficulty understanding other people’s time, their hurry or their slowness, their time constraints. I still can’t manage it” (p280).

Book Review: Africans in America

I began this season of my Social Passion reading (which would be civil rights/BLM) with some history. I began this way for a few reasons. I enjoy reading history. This book was already on my shelves. And I wanted to begin somewhere in a less disputed territory, on a less of-the-moment and less inflamed book. I will eventually read some of the more urgent titles (like The Next Jim Crow, Black Skin White Masks, How to Be an Antiracist, etc.) but I also want to read a little wider in this area, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to The Invisible Man to Making Sense of Human Rights.

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But Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery, a 1998 book by Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team in cooperation with a PBS TV miniseries, just felt right. With two lauded authors, a Peabody Award, and something like ten years of research and work, not to mention the shining reviews, I thought perhaps I could trust this ushering into the history of black slavery in America. Beginning for a moment on the shores of Africa, the hefty, almost 500 page book walks the reader through many years, events, and characters in American history—all with a focus on the African American population—up until slavery was officially illegal across the whole country. No further. Interspersed with quotes and even slightly creative narration (movie-like stories having to do with an historical event or person), I was on the edge of my seat. What an incredible, thorough job! Seriously. I was riveted.

I would love to see all students, either in high school or college, read this book. They would absorb a ton of American history along the way, but their understanding of American slavery, it’s nuances, its complications, its context, its faces, its moments of horror and its moments of celebration, would be deepened way beyond what the average student sucks up from a typical textbook. At least for me, so much of history was oversimplified and shined up for my education. Only through movies like Amistad and books like Roots did I get a little broader picture. Africans in America, on the other hand, gave me a much better understanding but also put things in their place chronologically, historically, and culturally so that there were lots of “Aha!” moments. There were also many moments when I said, “I didn’t know that!” or “I didn’t realize that!” While many of our current stories of slavery derive from either the Middle Passage or the Civil War era, there were so many other stages of slavery and so much breadth and context.

I felt a little like I was whirling around in loops while I read this book, but in a good way. Written in a voice that is both clear and informational and also engaging and authoritative (and even at times poetic), I could see what was happening like I was there and at the same time was hit by all these relevant bits of stories and history and facts that really made sense of the whole thing. There’s no dumbing down here, but there’s also a real accessibility. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to read more history and to tell everyone you meet about what you have learned. You feel richer. Richer in intelligence, in understanding, and maybe even in empathy.

I will admit that the book does end abruptly. At the beginning, we start with slavery in Africa and the interior of the country, and then move quickly to the Slave Coast and the Middle Passage. After centuries of history, we come to Abraham Lincoln. While we spent some time leading up to the Civil War, the entire Lincoln and Civil War is covered in a couple-page synopsis. I wonder if this is done because there is so much available on this time period? Even the aftermath of the war is covered in another couple pages, mostly quotes from now-ex-slaves as they ponder their new freedom. The real ending for this book is not the Emancipation Proclamation, as we anticipate, but a drawn-out scene slightly before the Civil War, where a famous, wealthy white man gets into debt and sells 429 slaves—slaves who have built a family and community over generations—in one day. It is truly heartbreaking to read and it is an interesting choice for a last, big scene.

I hate to sing too high a praise for any book, because I don’t like to set people up for disappointment. But I loved this book. It’s well-written. It’s timely. It’s important and well-done and interesting and intriguing and eye-opening and just great. If you’re the kind of person who will tolerate reading history, then you should read this book, for sure. If you’re not, then I suggest finding a copy of the PBS TV miniseries, though it can’t match the thoroughness or gravity of this tome.

*I am sad to say that this book is not as widely available as I assumed. You can find it used, though, and I hope you will.

TV SERIES/MOVIES

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AFRICANS IN AMERICA (PBS series)

This series is not easy to find. You can purchase the four videos from Amazon for more than $50, which I guess wouldn’t be that big of a deal if you were using it in a classroom year after year, but to watch it once? That’s a bit steep. You could do some looking around for streaming copies, but even PBS doesn’t have it on their subscription app (which is really weird to me). Anyhow, like I said above, if you’re not going to read this book, the least you could do is watch this series. Much of the narration, quotes, and even some images, are exactly the same as the book, but the book has so much more. If you’re looking for a teaching tool for American slavery history, then yes, this is a good one. But I really do recommend the book first and foremost, and the you don’t really need to follow it up with the series.

QUOTES

I underlined, circled, drew arrows all over this book (even though it is officially my husband’s. Whoops.) I am going to share with you some of the quotes that I either starred or put an exclamation point next to.

“’In this manner we spend the prime of youth among Negroes, scrapeing the world for money, the universal god of mankind, until death overtakes us’” (Nicholas Owens, p65).

“’I dayly perceive that many things are done here out of a Worldly and Interested principle, little for God’s sake’” (Francis Le Jau, p90).

“The travesty came to an end only with Mary Burton began accusing influential, moneyed New Yorkers” (p110).

“In Virginia, men who were not yet men could become slave owners. It was not uncommon for children to own other children” (p132).

“There was a bittersweet irony in giving birth to a child you could never really call your own” (p135).

“’Alas, what mockery it is for a slave mother to try to pray back her dying child to life! Death is better than slavery’” (Harriet Jacobs, p136).

“George escaped at nineteen and settled along the Savannah River, where he was captured by the Creek Indians and again placed in servitude” (p140).

“The colonists had become so incensed that they clearly saw themselves as slaves to the British” (p157).

“The Constitution held the respect for property at its center, and for Southerners in particular, human property was most important” (p201).

“’Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; the thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations, the real distinctions which nature had made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end…’” (Thomas Jefferson, p.203).

“The revolt was fueled by a heady mixture of anger, desperation, and voodoo mysticism” (p249).

“He believed they wouldn’t listen unless they were made to fear for their own lives” (p255).

“The Constitution had set 1808 as the first year that an end to the trade could be considered—but the lessons of St. Domingue had been well learned and the debate was greatly influenced by the specter of revolt” (p270).

“When he was sold, Charles Ball simply asked to see his family. He was told he would be able to ‘get another wife in Georgia’” (p272).

“Imagine a mother being forced to stand apart from her children, her heart straining forward, the child’s cries withering in the hot air. Imagine grown men struggling to stand motionless as they are matter-of-factly inspected—their teeth checked, their genitals poked and prodded…” (p272).

“She knew that some of her children would be taken from her, but they took all …. Before night, her children were all far away” (p273).

“Some ‘benevolent’ masters attempted to keep mothers and children together. But slave men were often regarded as having no connection whatsoever to family” (p274).

“Masters struggling with economic necessity, a smidgen of compassion, and a hefty dose of guilt still chose abuse as the most effective method of control” (p274).

“The South, in particular, was a virtual police state designed to keep blacks in their place” (p275).

“Their racism, as was not unusual, also had an economic base” (p278).

“In the eighteen years since the ban on African labor importation, hundreds of free blacks had been kidnapped into captivity. Many of them were children, considered easy to kidnap and conceal because a couple of years of wretched slave labor often rendered them unrecognizable” (p296).

“’I saw a mob dragging along… a respectable old colored minister. They had found a few parcels of shot in his house, which his wife had for years used to balance her scales. For this they were going to shoot him on Court House Green’” (Harriet Jacobs, p311).

“’The tribes which occupied the… eastern states were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward’” (Andrew Jackson, p349).

“There was hardly one of these women… who might not have been a candidate for a bed in a hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields’” (Fanny Kemble, p360).

“’She said something about a swing, and in less than five minutes headman Frank had erected it for her, and a dozen young slaves were ready to swing little ‘missus.’ Think of learning to rule despotically over your fellow creatures before the first lesson of self-government is well spelled over. It makes me tremble’” (Fanny Kemble, p360).

“Lear Green shipped herself to freedom in a sailor’s chest …. Maria Wheems disguised herself as a boy …. Minty was barely seven when he ran away” (p365).

“But racism was written into the very documents that guided the country. There were jobs black people could not hold, places where they couldn’t live, schools where they were forbidden to learn” (p373).

“’You had far better all die—die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity… there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood’” (Henry Highland Garnet, p384).

“’Resolved, that in the language of inspired wisdom, there shall be no peace to the wicked, and that the guilty nation shall have no peace, and that we will do all we can to agitate! Agitate! AGITATE!!!” (Frederick Douglass, p385).

“Under this law, any person—black or white—could be deputized to help capture and return a runaway slave. Refusing to participate in the capture and return of the fugitive would result in imprisonment and fine. And the only testimony allowed was the testimony of the person who claimed to own the alleged fugitive” (p388).

“But for two weeks an escaped slave had been the focal point of a uniquely American drama, bringing growing regional tensions into stark relief” (p403).

“’We have come to the conclusion that the African race who came to this country, whether free or slave, were not intended to be included in the Constitution for the enjoyment of any personal rights of benefits…” (Roger B. Taney, p418).

“By a five-to-two majority, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Scott, a slave, had never been a citizen” (p418).

“It was no longer a simple case of being free or enslaved—it was a man’s skin color, not his place in the social hierarchy, which determined his citizenship and share in the democracy” (p418).

“The decision confirmed the entire experience of black people since the founding of the nation. Only now the humiliation was official” (p419).

“’The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world…,’ he said. ‘Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities’” (p419).

“When President James Buchanan put a $250 bounty on [John Brown’s] head, Brown responded by placing a $2.50 bounty on James Buchanan” (p421).

“When Newby’s body was discovered, his wife Harriet’s love letters were nestled in his pocket. One of the townspeople had cut off his ears for a souvenir” (p428).

“Slave patriarchs sought out planters who seemed compassionate and begged them to bid for them and their families” (p436). “’Every time a bunch of No’thern sojers would come through they would tell us we was free and we’d begin celebratin’. Before we would get through somebody else would tell us to go back to work, and we would go’” (Ambrose Douglass, p440).

Media in Review: July 2020

Since I made that gigantic list of best movies and TV shows, I said that I would give you updates. But this is primarily a reading and writing blog, so I am going to limit my movie and TV reviews to a once-a-month update. (This has also come out of the pandemic, as I have had time to reconnect to my love of movies and have had way more screen time than is normal for me.)

Here’s what I’ve been watching this month.

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DARK (TV series)

I didn’t watch the entire series this month, but my husband finished watching the second and final seasons while I mostly paid attention. There was something about this series that didn’t hold me for long at a time, though I would be pretty alone on that, at least for people who would normally like this sort of thing. It’s a German sci-fi series, and you can find it in both subtitles and in overdubbing. My husband—despite his loathing of overdubbing—switched to it part of the way through because it takes a lot of brain power (rewinding, and Googling) to watch this one. It’s about time travel, mostly, which means my husband was in from the word “go.” We’re in small town Germany, a child has gone missing and a father has committed suicide. Before it’s all over, we have characters from various time periods, a number of missing children, time travelers, villains and heroes. Always slow, dark (ha!), and serious, we end up spanning more than a century and into the future, getting in a confused mess of families, relationships, theoretical science and moral gray areas, hoping that someone will save the day, whatever that means here. There’s been a lot of enthusiastic recommendations of this one, and if it’s your sort of thing, you’ll probably walk away singing its praise. Solid. Not for kids, and I love how Europeans know how to have a show and then end it. Catch it on Netflix.

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THE GREAT (TV series, season 1)

Well, my rule is usually if a show starts out with gratuitous sex and depravity, just leave off and let other people watch it. I don’t know if I made an exception because The Great is history (very loosely—this didn’t work with Vikings or Rome) or if it’s because depravity is the point (didn’t work for Game of Thrones), so we’ll have to just say I did watch it and I did do my Google-comparisons to actual history as it went along, which is the way I like to watch The Crown, as well. Not that this show is anything like The Crown. The Great is a new Hulu streaming series starring one of those omnipresent Fanning girls and Nicholas Hoult of Warm Bodies and About a Boy (both movies I recommend, incidentally). It’s a comedy, totally tongue-in-cheek. It’s rowdy. It’s bawdy. And it claims only an occasional relation to the history of Catherine the Great as she ascended to the throne in Russia. I have fast-forwarded over some of the sex, especially the scenes that modern shows seem to favor in a series’ infancy that have absolutely no plot-relevance. And yet the point is that the court of an 18th century Russian emperor was one wild, crazy, bumpy ride of cow-towing, violence, luxury, sensuality, and whim mixed with war, intrigue, religion, and a distant enlightenment. It seems an exaggeration, but it is interesting to contemplate what might happen if you had generations of entitled rulers bred and raised in an insular, incestuous world where no one was allowed to question their decisions. The series, so far, has excellent reviews and I kept waiting with bated breath for the next episode. Jury’s still out, for me.

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THE MATRIX (movie)

We jumped right into the Best Movies and Shows list with The Matrix, on our first family night. When I was in college, and in a philosophy program to boot, this movie came out and blew all of our minds. Kevin and I explained to our kids the context, including the innovative way the directors used stop-motion and multiple cameras and even invented techniques of filming in order to create a type of slow-mo action that is now fairly commonplace (and they could easily identify). We also made sure they didn’t ask too much about the movie up front because it really is better the first time around, when you don’t know what’s coming. Not that that kept me from watching it over and over when I was in my early twenties, partly because students in philosophy classes were very fond of referencing it, ad nauseum.

So what can I tell you? I can tell you that we own a copy, but that we rented it on Prime anyways because the effects are much better if you get the remastered version. Plus, it is so literally dark that it is just easier to see remastered, when you have older and more spoiled eyes, like mine. If you really don’t know, The Matrix is a 1999 action/sci-fi classic starring Keanu Reeves (in the one role I don’t mind him in). He’s a reclusive hacker with a monotonous day job who has an inkling that there is something more going on out there. He follows a white rabbit—and Trinity—down a rabbit hole that leads him to the truth about reality and a choice whether or not to accept it and truly live. I have to stop there, because it just has too many secrets.

I enjoyed watching it again, though I was surprised at how slow it moved at certain parts. It still remained suspenseful, over all. The cinematography was lush even though washed-out and, as I said, dark. It is a complete world we’re seeing here, though a bit gritty, for sure. The acting is pretty solid, though there are a few lame lines along with the quotable and a certain amount of stock characterization. I have joked many times that they finally found the role that Keanu Reeves has been playing his entire life and put him in it. The movie is a classic, and I was surprised by how many moments in the film are truly iconic, both in the action sequences and in the drama or the general story. (My son kept saying, “That’s a meme!”)  If you don’t like action, thriller, or sci-fi, I guess don’t bother. But if any of those have even a small purchase in your viewing habits, The Matrix is a must-see. (The sequels, on the other hand, are not. I would just leave them.)

THREE NEW FOOD SHOWS: CRAZY DELICIOUS, TIME TO EAT and TASTE THE NATION

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I triple-dipped this month in emerging food shows. Now, I am a sucker for food shows, but I don’t love them all. In fact, sometimes I get addicted to one, and I’m not sure why. Anyhow. Crazy Delicious is a British, food competition show on Netflix, which involves three competitors and three rounds of cooking hosted by an accented comedian, the first round giving an advantage, the second an elimination, and the third the prize (a golden apple). Sound familiar? Yeah, it totally is. The bend here, in an attempt to draw viewers, is that the food has to be both crazy ­and delicious and also that the chefs/cooks are cooking in an edible garden for the “food gods” (read: famous food personalities). It’s okay. It has fallen flat with reviewers and audiences, and I just kept being annoyed that the host wore the same thing every episode. I would watch more, but I’m not really waiting for more of the same.

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Time to Eat is Great British Baking Show champion Nadiya Hussain’s companion show for her cookbook, Time to Eat. I am a fan of Hussain’s, who won me (and everyone else) over way back on Great British with her bright eyes and shy smile, innocence, humility, and gentleness, not to mention talent. I follow her on Insta. She’s endearing, and I have now been won over to Time to Eat (and to the cookbook). I hope she makes many more seasons. And it’s not just her, it’s also the genius of many of the recipes. In the show, Hussain takes the viewer along on a journey into the kitchen and life of a home cook. (She also visits the source of a common English pantry staple, which is reminiscent of Sesame Street and very interesting.) While I won’t be recreating some of her hacks, there are a number of them that I now have in notes, like Why didn’t I think of that? Baked pancakes with flavor swirl? Ramen prepped in Mason jars with jerky? Love it!

As for Taste the Nation, the verdict is still out, for me. Now, when Lorraine Pascal went from model to food icon, I somehow went along for the ride. Somehow, I find Padma Lakshmi doing it more distracting, like I constantly question her authority. On Taste the Nation, she travels to different communities in America (from a native population to Chicago) to uncover the history and idiosyncrasies of food in that area. It’s compassionate and interesting enough, but, well, it’s no Anthony Bourdain. Perhaps I’m just not enamored with the hostess, or maybe I want more journalism with this otherwise great idea, but I can’t decide if I really like it or not.

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JERRY SEINFELD SPECIAL

Last month I finished watching every single episode of Seinfeld, which was of course a great experience. Seinfeld is so funny and iconic. Even laughing at the bad acting is a fun experience. It seemed appropriate, then, to click on Seinfeld’s newest comedy special on Netflix, 23 Hours to Kill. While I sorta hate when comedy specials don’t make me LOL, I still really liked this one because it was still really funny, just in a quieter way. I referenced it in my head throughout the week, thought my husband should watch it, and then it’ll fade into eventually not remembering if I had watched it or not. The truth is, it’s really hard to come up with a great stand-up special, and this one is worth a watch.

THE WORLD WIDE WEB (:-))

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What is happening on the internet and social media that is worth mentioning, this month? Well, for me it’s got to be SarahCPR (who I follow on Instagram). It is a channel currently devoted to making fun of what Trump says and how he says it, but man is it good stuff. If you’re not comfortable with that, you could try out wantshowasyoung on Instagram. In a twist on the weird-things-making-people-famous story, this elderly Taiwanese couple, who own a laundromat, has been rocketed into super-popularity by their grandson’s photos of them. In the photos, the two model lost and left-behind clothes from their laundromat and it is as cute as a button and hip as can be. What else did I share with those I love? The Holderness family pretending to be Rona (the annoying virus-turned-lady), kids drawings photoshopped to look disturbingly real, mask memes, Jordan Klepper at Trump rallies, 2020 memes, Leslie Jordan, Stan Carey cartoons, Reba the stowaway chicken… There’s always something to find on the internet, but I do try to stay away from it for most of each day.

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THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

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Another movie from the Best Movies list, I own this one, have seen it before, and thought it would make a good family night movie. It did, mostly. My son, at twelve, didn’t appreciate it as much as the rest of us. I, on the other hand, love this movie. I mentioned it previously on the blog as a recommend for the summer of 2014, but I didn’t say much more. Walter Mitty is based on a James Thurber short story and then an older adaptation, which I can’t seem to find any info about. In this version, Ben Stiller plays Walter, a subdued film acquisitions guy at Life magazine at a time when the magazine is being acquired and dismantled. He has a thing for his co-worker, played by Kristen Wiig, and an issue with Adam Scott. In an attempt to save his job, he has to track down a famous photographer, played by Sean Penn. Oh, and by the way, Walter lives a lot of his disappointing life in his head, and we watch his zone-outs like fantastical scenes of the movie until the events of the movie eventually become equally as fantastical. Romantic. Endearing. Funny. Despite its mixed review, I think it’s a hidden gem.

BEAT BOBBY FLAY

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When I find episodes of one of my top twenty Food Network shows, I just watch them until I have exhausted the free ones. This month it was Beat Bobby Flay. If you don’t know who Bobby Flay is, you may have been living under a rock. But I’ll tell you. He is a major food personality, a more-than-competent chef and restaurant owner, and a modern food rock-star. He’s everywhere, especially if you watch Food Network, and as an Iron Chef etc., Flay has become the one to beat. Thus the show. Two chefs come on each week, compete against each other in one round, and the chef left standing challenges Flay with a dish of their choosing. Flay, who sometimes has never even made the chosen dish or has minimal knowledge, still frequently goes on to whoop the other chef’s butt, despite attempts by the famous hosts, who all have it out for him (in a friendly way), trying to take Bobby down a peg. I think my husband finds this whole set-up obnoxious, with cocky Flay strutting around and practically cooking with his hands strapped behind his back. I, on the other hand, have accepted Flay as the master he is and study his methods with curious precision. Watch enough and you begin to see a method to the madness. Plus, I like almost any show that features plenty of food and cooking techniques of high caliber and at a rapid pace. It’s not my favorite food show, but I will keep watching it when it’s on.

PHINEAS AND FERB

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I didn’t do much actual watching of this show this month. My kids did, for nostalgia’s sake, but I have seen most of the show’s four seasons before. You see, when my kids were little nuggets, I noticed these strange-head-shaped cartoons around, but I just couldn’t get past the strange choice in animation. And then my daughter started watching it. And then, passing through the room, so did my son. And my husband. And me. And it became not only a family show to watch—the best animated series we’ve ever enjoyed together—but also a minor obsession, from a Perry coffee mug to a Perry beach towel to a four-character Halloween costume. It’s a ridiculously simple idea which repeats every single episode: it’s summer vacation and two step-brothers look for fun in inventions of epic proportions. Their friends join in the fun, their sister attempts to tattle on them to their mom, and meantime a villain-inventor from the same town is busy with devious creations of his own, which is always thwarted by Phineas’ and Ferb’s secret agent platypus in such a way as to make their own invention disappear in a poof of teen sister Candace’s frustration. Just go with it. It’s funny. It’s cute. It’s creative. If you have Disney Plus, and especially if you have kids, you should give this show a shot. It is entirely possible you’ll enjoy it much more than you anticipated.

RECENT SPIDERMAN MOVIES

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And then we got on to a Spiderman kick. My son randomly turned Into the Spiderverse on my room TV one night, and I just couldn’t look away. I’d seen this movie once before, and I don’t exaggerate when I say it is hands-down my favorite comic book hero movie. You’ve probably already seen if it you are going to, but still. Animated in a compellingly creative way, it is in some respects the traditional Spiderman story we’ve heard before until we realize that Spiderman has counterparts in other dimensions and when a couple of the classic villains build a machine to snatch people from those other dimensions, a few versions collide. Given modern twists to make this one especially relevant, this version really stands a head above the rest. Visually stunning. Thoughtful. Even good dialogue. Full of heart-warming characters and great twists and turns, this is comic book movies at its absolute best.

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Next, my daughter talked me into allowing the two most recent Spiderman remakes. (I believe there is a third one being made.) I get very weary of watching comic book movies. The way I remember it, there used to be one or two big comic book movie come out in a year and it was a big deal and everyone went and saw them and came out punching each other and hootin’ and hollerin’, thinking they could save the world. I feel like now there’s another Marvel or DC movie every week and they’re all incredibly interconnected (like the comics, I know) and serial and yet not serial, and the actors change and then we do a re-make like two years after the last one and… Not that action was every really my genre, but I can appreciate a big blockbuster and innovative CG with the rest of them.

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We watched Homecoming and Far From Home in one night (our nights have been getting later and later all summer) over our Thursday night local take-out (falafel, actually). I agreed because even I am sometimes outvoted. I also agreed because my daughter enjoyed these movies so much she owns the first one, and the rest of us had never seen them. Thankfully—though not as special as Into the Spiderverse—these two movies do have a different flavor from most the other comic movies, in that they’re much more childlike, more innocent somehow. And the characters feel a little more down-to-earth. Also, can you imagine the chutzpah it takes to produce an entire movie where the love interest is present and yet hidden in plain sight? (Of course, if you weren’t sure you could develop the series further…) There was enough different (in an exciting way) about these movies, that I would recommend them, even if you don’t especially love superhero movies. If you do, well, then you should definitely see them.

THE HARRY POTTER MOVIES

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Like many stay-at-home-during-the-pandemic families, we have tried out jigsaw puzzles. I was opposed, at first, but after Kevin said he’d like one and my aunt sent one along to help with quarantine and then it sat, slowly forming, on the family room table for weeks, I got hooked on making my own contribution once in a while. When my husband mentioned within earshot of my mom that he was enjoying puzzles, she also sent one along, this time a Harry Potter one, which made us feel understood and loved. So we began again. Now, we (Slytherin + Gryffindor = Hufflepuffs) are already obsessed with Harry Potter and we watch the movies at least once a year. I have already reviewed them HERE (as well as the books, of course), so I don’t need to do it again. But this has been our thing for the last few weeks: nights where we eat popcorn, drink seltzer mocktails, fiddle with the puzzle, and watch the next movie in the series. We’re making memories here, folks. Anchoring in the storm.

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

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When I heard they were making a movie about Mr. Rogers, I was psyched. Not only was I a Mr. Rogers fan in my youth, but I know that Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and I was hoping for a positive portrayal of the Christian faith on the big screen. Tom Hanks seemed like a pretty good choice to play the role, and I waited. And waited. And waited. Because someone I couldn’t seem to get to the theater to watch it, or get my family on board to rent it. Which was maybe an okay thing, because the movie ended up just okay. I would recommend it, but I doubt I’ll watch it again. It was unexpected, but not in the best way. Let’s just get you ready: it’s not a biography, but the story of Mr. Rogers’ relationship with a rogue reporter from Esquire magazine. The story is embellished quite a bit, but the real main character here is Lloyd, the fictionalized version of Tom Junod, not Rogers. The story is interesting, though largely for the bit we see into Rogers’ life, not the been-done man-off-the-rails finding-his-way-back bit where he comes to terms with the alcoholic father who abandoned him. Also, the framing of the movie is unique, but it has a hard time deciding if it’s innovative or creepy. It’s like we’re watching a looooong episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood with some startlingly adult footage (though not inappropriate, that’s not what I mean). It works because Rogers is doing what he did best: helping someone reach maturation through dealing with their feelings, and the story has its genesis in a real relationship and events. But it also feels disorienting to those of us who are triggered to certain gentler feelings with the so-familiar xylophone music and hand puppets. Where are we?!? I wish it had been better.

SPEED

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For our final family movie night of the month, we toyed with four ideas from the Best Movies list and settled on Speed. Yeah, the one from the nineties with Keanu Reeves (again) and Sandra Bullock in her quintessential role. My husband was all like, “Speed? What’s that doing on the list?” and I was all like, “I think it’ll be popular all ‘round.” And, believe it or not, it totally was. There are a couple incidences of gory violence, a comment about sex, and plenty of swearing, but for our tween-teens and us, it was a great pick. We laughed. We chatted. We sat on the edge of our seats. We laughed at the movie instead of with it a couple times. We marveled at how solid it was for an old blockbuster. We gasped. We frowned. We smiled. You get it. With the romance, action, and super-classic feel of this movie, you leave feeling like it’s the uber-movie of its type.

I also watched the recent Little Women with Emma Watson and the entire Twilight series this month, but their reviews will be going with their respective book reviews. I recommend them both, but for totally different reasons and one with caveats galore.

Book Review: In Our Backyard

Continuing with the Social Passion Series, I reached for another book on human trafficking. Last time it was a standard about trafficking around the world, this time it was a book about trafficking in the US. In Our Backyard by Nita Belles was published in 2015, so it is still up-to-date, though specific facts may have had time to change (like website addresses or statistics). Overall, it is a great resource for learning about modern day slavery as it operates in the United States of America.

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In an ideal world, everyone would be educated about modern slavery. In my perfect world, everyone would read at least one book on world slavery and one book on local slavery. So far, I can recommend books by Kevin Bales for trafficking on a global scale, and I would be happy to recommend In Our Backyard to educate people on trafficking in the US. It is not, perhaps, a perfect book and I have some suspicions about some of the numbers (though nearly everyone admits that numbers are difficult to come by in such a subversive element), but it would be great for people to read about the various scenarios that can and are happening in our backyard, in every city and town in America. It is also a very practical book, constantly reminding us what we can and can’t do to help or to get involved, giving us organizations, phone numbers, websites, etc.

Belles’ chapters could be read independent of each other, as she repeats a lot of information. It’s not super clear how the book is divided up, but it is full of stories that Belles has collected through her time in the field. From a boy who was abducted and trafficked over the border into a California neighborhood brothel, to a high school girl who was convinced by her new boyfriend to run away to a life of prostitution, from an immigrant man held prisoner, starving in a sub-standard trailer near a tomato farm where he was forced to work, to a mother-daughter duo who were coerced into the porn industry, it is appropriate to break down how modern day slavery has a number of different faces. Though there are patterns: children and teens; especially runaways; immigrants; foreigners looking for opportunity in America; large events (yes, like the Superbowl, but also others). These are all areas of vulnerability that criminals and abusers are waiting to exploit at the first opportunity. But Belles is also big on underlining that none of us or our children are 100% safe from exploitation, especially with criminals’ ubiquitous presence on the internet, but also in and around our high schools, events, etc.

Belles also repeats over and over that the victims are the victims. Too frequently, individuals who have been coerced or forced into trafficking/slavery are then treated as criminals and prosecuted for things such as prostitution, debt, illegal immigration status, etc. while their traffickers and “customers” are rarely prosecuted. Belles is personally working to change this reality as much as is in her power, but she also wants people to become educated about the reality of victimization and re-victimization. Her book is also about what part we—as average Americans—contribute to slavery. Consumption of goods, unharnessed consumerism, a blind eye, ignorance (and for some, pornography use or even sex tourism)… there are ways that we too are complicit in the victimization and abuse of others. It is possible that even those who participate in the sex industry, legally or otherwise, don’t understand that they are a cog in a terrible machine that is prone to—and indeed subsists on—exploitation. Knowledge is power. (Not that it’s all about sex trafficking and women. Belles given various other examples of trafficking in the US—domestic workers, indentured labor, migrant farmers, even in one case a children’s choir—but sex trafficking is a large slice of the pie.)

Belles chats about terminology, statistics, anecdotes, experiences, people doing good, victories and failures. Again, even though it’s not a perfect book, it’s a great book to learn about modern slavery in America and I would highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

FREEDOM FIRM

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During the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the anti-trafficking organizations that I have supported over the years reached out to me. They are trying a social media approach during the quarantine which involves “ambassadors” posting stories on their outlets once a month. I signed on. Last month, I posted Nadia’s story on my Facebook. This month, I am going to present you with Tina and Sayantika, friends who have been rescued from trafficking in India. Please consider giving their story a read. You can also purchase jewelry, scarves and bags from Freedom Firm (or just donate). This is an organization that I have not only followed over several years, but have been an active part of on a volunteer basis. I have met some of the rescued girls, workers, and leaders. This is a great organization to support.

Click on the photo to the left/above (or HERE) to read this month’s story. You can also purchase/donate from there.

QUOTES

Though I underlined a ton in this book, there weren’t as many quotables as straight-up info.

“When we see something that could be human trafficking, let’s report it to 1-888-373-7888 or text “HELP” to BeFree (233722)” (p97).

“But we can never lose sight of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim” (p201).

“The FBI determined nothing was wrong because they didn’t see any handcuffs or bruises on the boys” (p48).

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