Cait’s Comments (group member since Jan 31, 2017)

Cait’s comments from the Around the World in 80 Books group.

I am also confused about this book! I didn’t even include a rating because I don’t know how I felt. It *definitely* is good discussion fodder though (especially considering it’s less than 100 pages), so a good choice for our club.

-Regarding what you said about whoever thought ‘sexy’ and ‘satirical’ was a good description: YES. Who. Thought. This. Was. Sexy. Literally *nothing* sexy ever happens, it is a woman’s horror story from start to finish. Even the one part where Jasmine is describing a supposedly positive sexual dream reads like a gang rape! (Side note: I agree that it’s impressive a man wrote this, and he clearly has been listening to women to note some of the details, as you pointed out …But I also found it pretty obvious that a man wrote it throughout. Especially towards the end, when Jasmine is supposed to be experiencing immense pleasure and it felt like ‘every man on earth was penetrating her,’ or whatever the actual quote is… yikes.)

-About the potential for negative stereotypes – yeah, I can definitely see that concern. I agree with you that it’s probably not written with a Western audience in mind (I mean, given that this is his only English translated work, I would bet on it), but I don’t think it *should* be written with a western audience in mind either. It’s like what Toni Morrison said/says about the white gaze. Basically, there’s a lot of pressure to write to that gaze – can a black person write what they want to write if it might feed into a perceived stereotype on ‘black-on-black-crime’ or some other harmful stereotype? And the answer is yes, of course! White people can and do get a lot out of Beloved and Morrison’s other works, but she doesn’t care. It’s not for us. Same here. Yemen writers and Muslim writers should be able to write the stories they need to tell, critique the things they need to critique, and we’ll just sit back here listening and learning and not using it as ammunition because you shouldn’t complain about someone’s cleaning when your own house is a mess.

Also – what do westerners really have to brag about? Yes, having the law technically on our side is not a small thing, but part of why this book was so hard for me to read is because everything terrible thing being said was something that we all see & hear ALL THE TIME. Online, in the office, in our high schools and just everywhere. It’s often not so explicit, but while I think that it is better to not share your thoughts if they’re misogynistic trash, it’s problematic enough to have the thoughts in the first place.

-Speaking of gazes – I found this book hard to read. Not because of writing (and obviously not because of length), but just because the male gaze was SO HEAVY. Not a page went by – heck, not a paragraph went by – without being under that gaze. That was the point, but it was oppressive and stressful to read nonetheless. I just went to a reading and Q&A with Minnesota poet Bao Phi this week, and one of the questions that he was asked was about a poet’s, or any artist’s responsibility / response to trauma. And Phi said (something like) artists find beauty in ugly things, because retelling trauma in a bulleted list is retraumatizing – both to the artist, and the reader. One role for artists may be to retell trauma in a way that can be absorbed and processed and shared without just replaying that trauma. He was pretty ‘I don’t know if that’s the answer’ because obviously there’s a million roles for an artist, and when we say to find beauty in ugly things, we don’t mean that things should be covered up, painted over, or falsified. Anyway, this was a SUPER long tangent, but basically it was on the top of my mind (as I finished the book the day after) and I don’t know if this book went through that alchemy of transformation, or was just a retelling of trauma.

I have many more thoughts and responses, but this is already a long post so I’ll stop for now :)

I just started reading this today because I reeeeaally want to talk with you about all the things you've mentioned so far. Including what you said about repressed nerd culture, because I'd only read the first couple pages directly after I got it and that was in my mind.

Yeah I also had to get mine from some third party seller on Amazon (Book Depository US? I dunno, they sent along an adorable cupcake bookmark so they're ok in my book :) ) At least it wasn't a spendy one... and like you said, Becki, if I don't like it I can always donate it to the library!

I just got the book in the mail yesterday, and haven't started yet, but my first thought is that this book is so short! It's going to be a quick read for sure.

Apparently I'm not done thinking about this, even though the discussion is technically over. I'm thinking more and more about the impact colonialism has had EVERYWHERE.

Like Claire did, I noted the part where Matar said how difficult it is to find books on Libyan history by a Libyan - and I thought about how the same is true for so many groups and countries. I remember noting the same thing in Sweet and Sour Milk, when they talked about how they were taught that Somalia had no history, because they had no buildings like Italy (again, with the Italian colonization - which I'm ashamed to say I didn't even know was a thing - I always associated colonization with the UK, France, Spain, the US... for some reason not Italy). And it's the same thing I've found when researching books for this group, because there always seem to be more books by white people with no skin in the game than there are by people who are from the countries we're focused on.

Also, because I'm reading the Round House by Louise Erdrich, who is an Ojibwe author who writes fiction about Native Americans (which I highly recommend), I'm thinking again about the concentration camps and the concerted effort, world-wide, to steal land and systematically wipe out the original owners - ranging from physically murdering huge numbers, to imprisonment in camps and reservations, to erasing history, language, and religion - from the Bedouin in Libya to the Ojibwe and Dakota in Minnesota.

That's a good point about how not only endorsements, but also missed opportunities to actually assist with problems and develop relationships, allows dictators to entrench themselves further.

Also, did you guys catch the part where Matar talked about the 'book festival' that Qaddafi threw, which he used to find, imprison, and torture Libyan authors? That's something that I actually learned about while I was trying to find options for us to read - I was surprised because it was actually a lot harder to find Libyan books than it had been for other countries, and especially ones that had been translated, but then I found an article about that and was like OH. It's hard to find books because Qaddafi literally imprisoned an entire generation of authors and truth tellers, which not only impacted them, but instilled a lot of fear and took away their chance to cultivate other authors and truth tellers in coming generations. Matar talks a little more about the 'power of fiction' and what Qaddafi did in this article from NPR.

Another thing that I forgot to talk about was how Matar dicusssed UK officials, like Tony Blair, legitimizing Qaddafi and his inner circle. I think that deserves some thought because you know it's not just a problem in this case, but with many dictators that have the cash to make it worth it for the UK, US, etc. to turn a blind eye. And that's not even including those situations, like what I read about in My Invented Country, where the US actually put the dictator in power in the first place! What a cognitive dissonance for Matar to have to speak to someone who is responsible for murders, torture, and all sorts of unspeakable acts over coffee, to see them meeting with high level officials and being awarded degrees.

Edit: Claire, I see you mentioned this! Sometimes I wonder why I'm not aware of a lot of the international news - then I remember that 1) I wasn't paying much attention until the last couple of years, 2) You have to actively seek out these stories because the media would rather sell you fabric softener, 3) There are usually interested parties actively blocking truth.

The Italian colonialism stuck out to me too - on the one hand because it's been a constant theme in the books we've read, and on the other because I didn't have the *smallest* idea that there had been concentration camps & genocide. It was interesting to think about how Matar's family has a long history of resistance, and how it was the whole family that was targeted by the regime, not just the Matar's father as the leader.

Another thing that struck me about this, is that despite the obvious trauma and injustice of what happened to Matar's family, they were clearly a pretty privileged upper class - and I think so was Satrapi's family in Persepolis, and Yazbek's in A Woman in the Crossfire. I don't think that diminishes what happened to them, or the hugely important stories that they tell, but it does make me think about who *gets* to tell the stories.

Also, I think this might just be my favorite of the books we've read so far. It's kind of the ideal of what I wanted for this club, I learned a lot from it about Libya, past and present (although obviously just the basics) and it was just *so* well written.

A lot of stuff stuck out to me, obviously, but one of the things was just how well Matar winds his relationship with his father and his relationship with a missing father through every aspect of the book - I couldn't doubt for an instant how it affected every moment of his life. There's a particular quote that stood out to me - "Pain shrinks the heart. This, I believe, is part of the intention. You make a man disappear to silence him but also to narrow the minds of those left behind, to pervert their soul and limit their imagination. When Qaddafi took my father, he placed me in a space not much bigger than the cell Father was in." (p 213) Although like all of our books, The Return is depressing and horrifying at many points, I thought Matar's storytelling was masterful.

Our traditional ongoing question - what are you thinking as you read The Return? What sticks out to you?

Also from CAIR-MN, 10 Ways to Get Involved.
http://www.cairmn.com/57-internships/...

I'm still thinking the best way to do an action might be to just commit to writing/calling representatives each month - probably about refugee issues (or it can change each month if there is a particular topic?) What are you guys thinking?

Just saw this posted by CAIR-MN:Potluck Dinner with Syrian Families & members of Women's March. Obviously not everyone in this group is in MN or the Twin Cities, but it's an option (and there is also a way to donate if you can't attend).

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/potluck-...

Yes, the parallels between the different extreme religious views also stuck out to me!

And another thing that struck me as I was reading was the continual theme of people not believing Satrapi's experiences while she was in Europe. If ever there was a perfect recipe for depression, it would be seeing those horrors, being ripped from your family, and then being dropped into a world where not only do people have no idea what has happened to you, but they consider you crazy/a liar when you share any detail. At the same time, I understood why people didn't believe, because as I keep reading books from these countries, I keep learning about things I couldn't have imagined on my own. (I like to think I wouldn't be a jerk and doubt someone's lived experience, though.)

I really liked the cartoony style as well - first, because Satrapi has a clear sense of humor that comes through both in her art and in the text, but also because I thought the kind of spare style was a really good use of... I don't know, emotional white space? It's like you said with adults reading the child's story with their own interpretation, I thought that the minimalist way she presented it made you think more than if she'd spelled it all the way out. Did that make sense?

Because I just participated in a bunch of discussions on Americanah for my work book club, that straddling of two places was also at the top of my mind while reading Persepolis - the same with the mental health aspect, as Satrapi and Persepolis and Ifemelu in Americanah both deal with severe depression after their moves to Europe/America respectively. In Americanah it really made me think about how vulnerable we all are without those human connections with people who are physically there to check in on us, to keep us safe, and I thought of that again in Persepolis when here parents were frantically calling for her while she lived on the streets, but had no way to contact her or even know if she was alive or dead.

Hey Sylvia, I'm so happy you're here! It's definitely true that the books we're reading have all required a lot of emotional energy, and when you don't have it you don't have it :( I felt similarly about Woman in the Crossfire. I was happy that Persepolis was easier to manage! Iran was actually a lot easier to pull a variety of books from, so that was kind of a relief right there.

A few of us mentioned how different it was to view the Iranian revolution and war with Iraq through a child's eyes, versus witnessing the first 100 days of the Syrian revolution through Yazbek, who was an adult journalist. How did this point of view affect your reading of Persepolis?

Did Satrapi's choice of storytelling through comics help or hinder the story, and how so?

Or if GoodReads isn't working for people we could start a Facebook group.