Read In Colour’s Comments (group member since Oct 23, 2012)

Read In Colour’s comments from the Books: Passports to the World Challenge group.

Globetrotting journalist Raquel Cepeda takes readers around the world from New York to the Dominican Republic to Morocco and back again in Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina. If ever there was a book that meets the guidelines for the Books: Passports to the World challenge, this is it. There's a lot of information to digest within the pages, but it's well worth the read.

Born the daughter of an idealistic mother and an unaffectionate father, the young Raquel spends much of her time trying to figure out where she fits. That applies to both her home life, which is turbulent, and, later, her school life. Upon being sent to the Dominican Republic to be raised by her grandparents following her parent's divorce, her childhood happiness peaks. Her mother brings her back to the States, a puzzling decision since she seems to have no use for her, where she witnesses domestic violence on a daily basis. Eventually, Raquel is sent to her father and stepmother in New York, and they seem to have little use for her either. Verbally abused by her father, and occasionally a victim of domestic violence, Raquel merely bides her time until she can leave for college.

While most teens seek solace in her friends and classmates, the author finds little comfort there either. In America, there is a tendency to categorize people. We want people to fit into a "checkable" box. As a daughter of the diaspora, Raquel felt a kindred connection to other people of color, but for her black classmates, she was too white and for her white classmates, she was too black. So there was a separation by skin tone and even more, a separation between those Dominican students who had been in America for a while and those who had recently emigrated.

I believe that everything happens for a reason and after reading this book, I think Cepeda does too. Her childhood and young adult experiences eventually lead her on a journey to find out more about her family's ancestry. While she could go the genealogical route, she's more interested in finding out where her people originated. Yes, they ended up in the Dominican Republic, but how did they get there? What is their ethnic origin? What is the history of relations between Africa and the island? And why does she feel so drawn to una india, an Amerindian or Indigenous-American spiritual guide?

Occasionally I have a-ha moments with books, I had quite a few with Bird of Paradise. The one that stands out most is the whitening of the country. While Hitler was killing Jews in Europe, Rafael Trujillo was doing the same to Haitians, sanctioning the killing of 20,000 Haitians in what became known as the Parsley Massacre. To further whiten his nation, he encouraged Europeans, those fleeing Hitler especially, to emigrate to the Dominican Republic. Trujillo's suppression of all things African was continued by his successors up until 1996.

Another a-ha moment came as I read about the fluidity of race in the Dominican Republic. The U.S. has long practiced the one drop rule, in which one drop of African/African-American blood means you're black. In the DR, it is the opposite. One sixteenth of white blood means you're white. Darker Dominicans who have attained a higher financial or social status can be deemed white as well. Fascinating stuff indeed.

So I know I've rambled on much longer in this review than usual, but it's the perfect blend of storytelling and science. It's a fascinating read for all of my genealogical/anthropological readers, as well as my memoir readers. It should be noted that there are phrases sprinkled throughout in Spanish, but that shouldn't dissuade you from reading it. Some of them are translated, others are not. If you have a basic knowledge of any of the romance languages, you should be able to infer what is being said.

Thanks Pam! I'll add it to the group bookshelf.

Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1978, Donia Bijan and her family lived a charmed life in Iran. You can hear the pride in her words as she writes of her doctor father and nurse mother who built a hospital from the ground up. Raised in an apartment above the hospital, Donia and her sisters were raised not only by their parents, but by the nurses at the hospital as well.

Even as she plays the role of nurse and mother, Maman (I don't recall the author ever giving her actual name) also takes on women's issues and politics. Not only does she serve on the board of several organizations fighting for women's rights, she becomes the director of Tehran's first nursing school and serves in parliament. While all of these actions are notable, they also prove to be a factor in her family's exile from Iran.

Spanning her family's time first in Iran, then in Spain and finally in America (with an interlude in France), Maman's Homesick Pie is as much a love letter to the author's mother as it is a cookbook. While her father wanted Donia to be a doctor, and was quite disappointed that she was not, her mother encouraged her love of cooking from a young age and went to great lengths to make sure her daughter could achieve her dream.

The end of each chapter includes a recipe or two that ties back to something the author has mentioned in that chapter. She includes an anecdote about her mother or why she or her mother created the recipe. Though some of the recipes didn't necessarily appeal to me, I did find myself dog-earing a few pages for recipes I definitely plan to go back and try.

If I've learned nothing else in the first few months of this challenge, it's that women and girls around the world live difficult lives. That's not to say that I didn't know that before, but it was never more obvious to me than when reading Amma Darko's Faceless.

Fourteen year old Fofo is a street child. Like many children who live in an area referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra, Ghana, she's estranged from her family. Unlike some of the children that have been put out on the streets to work, she voluntarily left home before she could be forced to. Whether she left by force or her own volition is moot, because it's likely that the outcome would have been the same.

Growing up, Fofo saw her older brothers leave, and with them, most of the household income, and her older sister. While her brothers left to pursue their own careers, Fofo's older sister, Baby T, left under cloudier circumstances. And when Baby T is found murdered, Fofo is determined to help her new found friends find out what happened to her sister.

Amma Darko uses Faceless to touch on quite a few issues. The character Fofo deals with abandonment, while Baby T deals with molestation and prostitution. Their mother, Maa Tsuru, the product of a single parent home seeks love and attention from men who use her. With the character Kabria, the middle class agency worker who tries to assist Fofo, Darko highlights the difficulties in balancing the role of mother, wife and employee in a chauvinistic society.

The one thing that threw me was the way Darko interjected the AIDS conversation into the story line. There was a missed opportunity for Kabria to have a conversation with her oldest daughter about AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases that was not fleshed out. It was obvious that she wanted to get the message out, and I applaud her for that, but the ways in which she did it did not flow well with the story and instead of being well integrated, they read as commercial-like PSAs in the middle of a skit.

The space between women of differing religions, socioeconomic statuses, age groups and the space between men and women are all touched upon in Thrity Umrigar's The Space Between Us. While the differences are vast at times, in some instances, there is very little difference.

Bhima has worked as a servant in Sera's house for more than twenty years. Bhima has witnessed the abuse Sera suffers at the hands of her husband, yet doesn't pass judgement. She is there to pick up the broken pieces and serve her mistress as best she can, even if that means neglecting her own family's needs.

Sera married Feroz believing that a lifetime of happiness awaited her. Instead she got a husband prone to violence and an equally abusive, albeit verbal, mother-in-law. The bright spots in her life are her daughter Dinaz and her son-in-law and the unwavering loyalty of Bhima.

The lives of Sera and Bhima are so deeply intertwined. Each woman depends on the other for emotional support, yet there are still unwritten rules that keep them from crossing the bridge into friendship. For as long as Sera has known Bhima, and as much as she depends on her, she's still very much aware that she is her servant and not her friend. The men of the book seem to feel that Sera has forgotten this, but the reader is reminded by Sera's actions that she has not. Most telling of this is a family argument in which Bhima is firmly reminded that she is indeed a servant and not a member of the family.

Umrigar gives you a lot to think about with this one: Bhima's relationship with her granddaughter, which is strained by the differences in age and levels of education; Bhima's relationship with her husband, in contrast and side by side with Sera's relationship with her husband and even Dinaz's relationship with her husband; Sera's relationship with her mother-in-law vs. her relationship with Dinaz. In addition, each woman must live with consequences brought about as a result of choices their husbands have made, with no room for discussion, refusal or rebuttal.Each relationship explored is more alike than they are different, separated only by the imaginary space between them.

If you approach Russian literature, particularly short stories, with the idea that in the end you'll learn something or that there will be a moral to the story, you'll be sadly disappointed. If you're looking for happy endings and stories that are wrapped up with a nice, neat bow, you'll be sadly disappointed. But if you read them for a glimpse at the grit of everyday life, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's latest is just what you need.

With her previous book of shorts, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, Petrushevskaya was compared to the geniuses of the macabre, like Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Nikolai Gogol. The stories in There Once Lived...have earned her comparisons to Tolstoy and Chekhov. While I enjoy the works of both of those authors, her writing most reminds me of the short stories of Alexander Pushkin, often called the father of Russian lit. There is no prettying up the lives of the average Russian. Their stories are simply presented as they are.

In the short A Murky Fate, the protagonist is a single, thirty something who lives with her mother. With apartments being hard to come by, it's not surprising or frowned upon that adults live with their parents, waiting to inherit it when they die. The joy she feels at having at last found a man to spend the evening with her, even if it means asking her mother to leave the studio apartment they share, is palpable. However, her joy is short lived when she realizes that this married man, who's not much to look at and doesn't have much going for himself, barely knows her name. Yet she knows she will forever remember their one night together and spend her days pining for him; sad that she no longer has him, but glad to have known happiness even if it was extremely brief.

Like I said, there's little glamour in Petrushevskaya's shorts, but her stories do cause you to think. Fans of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov and even Lermontov or Moliere would do well to give this one a read.

No one told us that sometimes evil is found much closer to home, and that those who want to harm us can have the most soothing and familiar of voices.

As a child, Morayo and her sister Eniayo loved visits from their older cousin, Bros T. A gifted storyteller, everyone recognized that he lied effortlessly, still, there was really no harm in his lies. But as the saying goes, if you'll lie, you'll steal. The day money goes missing, Bros T swears he hasn't taken it, lying to both his overindulging mother and his disbelieving grandmother. It's then that Mama Ejiwunmi recognizes that her grandson is a bad seed.

Expulsion from school and pleas from Aunty Tope result in Bros T taking up residence in the Bassey household and begin Morayo's descent into her own private hell. While Bros T's molestation of Morayo only takes up a few pages in the book, it is really her life after and the decisions she makes as a result of living with the shame that make up the bulk of Daughters Who Walk This Path.

This book could have been about any variety of topics. In fact, within the first few pages, I thought there was a chance that it would focus on albinism, since much is made of Eniayo's birth and the realization that she is an albino. Knowing that albinos in Nigeria often face discrimination, Kilanko had the opportunity to touch on that. Beyond a few comments about Eniayo being teased in school, no mention is made of it.

Instead, Daughters focuses on the repercussions that women live with when they're not allowed to make their own decisions about their bodies and who is allowed access to them. As the men that have violated them go through life carefree, the women are the ones that deal with mistrust, feelings of inadequacy and a host of other things that prohibit them from fully engaging in meaningful relationships. Though Morayo and her aunt Morenike are victims of similar situations, how they choose to deal with life after and which paths they choose differ greatly.

Remember that others have walked this path before you and now balance babies on their backs. Daughters, yours will not be an exception.

Fourteen kilometers separate Morocco from Spain. Those 14 kilometers can be the difference between living and merely existing. Though it seems like a minor distance, taking no more than thirty minutes to cross, the two countries are worlds apart. The members of the group that set off for Spain in the six meter inflatable have a variety of reasons for leaving Morocco, but their ultimate goal is to create a better life for themselves.

Having failed her college exams for a second time, an increasingly religious Faten leaves Morocco after narrowly escaping arrest. With a bachelor's in English Literature, Murad thought he'd easily find a job, but six years after graduation, he's only had one interview and, instead, spends his days trying to convince tourists to let him act as their tour guide. Aziz leaves behind his wife and mother because he even though has a certificate in repairs, he can't find a job. Beaten daily by her alcoholic husband who can't hold a job, Halima would gladly pay him for a divorce if it didn't mean leaving her children behind.

Lalami divides the book into before and after. By doing so, you're not sure who survived the trip. Even in knowing who survived, you aren't sure if they made it to Spain without incident or if they were deported back to Morocco. I loved her writing style and characters. Each one, though very different from another, was equally interesting and likable. I found myself hoping all of them made to Spain.

Prior to reading this, I never really gave much thought to Morocco and didn't realize it was so close to Spain. With its large Arabic population and Islamic influence, one can easily forget that it sits on the continent of Africa.

Thanks to everyone that has added books to the bookshelf or reviews to the folder. Here are a few housekeeping rules to keep us running smoothly.

Book Reviews: As a courtesy to your fellow readers, please remember to put the name of the country in parentheses in the title of your book review post.

Book Shelf: Please remember to tag any book you add to the shelf with the name of the country in which it's set. This will make it easier for readers that are searching for books by country to find them. Tags have already been established for most countries; however, if you don't see the country in the list, that means no one has added a book from that country. Please create a tag for it.

Xuela Claudette Richardson is born the daughter of a Carib woman and a Scottish/African father. Her mother died during childbirth and the reader is reminded of this, seemingly, at least once a chapter. The lack of a mother frames all of Xuela's thoughts and she seems to use it as an excuse for how she lives her life. Choosing not to love anyone, not even her father, Xuela comes across as a bitter and lonely individual.

While I know Jamaica Kincaid's work is hailed in certain circles, this book left me exhausted. The repeated statement about Xuela's mother's death, her disregard and dislike for everyone around her and the supernatural undercurrent wore me out. The author dwelled entirely too long in childhood and I eagerly anticipated her growing up and maturing. Instead, I was treated to a rude, older version of the same character.

Initially I picked this book because I thought I might learn something of Dominican culture; however, short of the story being set in Dominica, there was little to learn of the country from the words of the author. Since I'm obligated to read a book from a different country each week, it was too late to turn back and try another book once I was 50 pages into this one. But given the opportunity, I would have preferred a different book.

Jade wrote: "I want to preface my review by stating that I thoroughly enjoyed Danticat's "The Farming of Bones" when it was introduced to me in college. I loved the style, the author's voice, and the ambivalent..."

I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only person underwhelmed and sometimes confused by Danticat's writing and what she's trying to get across. Thanks for posting!

"When independence came, we celebrated with tears in our eyes. We would continue the struggle to ensure that our children received every opportunity of Western privilege...There was nothing that our children asked for that we denied them. We who had grown up knowing only deprivation, austerity and hard labor. We wanted only the best for them. We even sent them to the best private schools with plenty of whites... But it was all in vain. They have neither respect nor gratitude....these modern children are culturally bleached."

As Zenzele announces her intentions to leave Harare, Zimbabwe for the halls of Harvard, her mother reflects on life lessons that her daughter must know before she leaves for the states. As the eldest of five children raised by a widowed mother, Zenzele's mother, Shiri, never had the privilege of thinking about global warming or worrying about the starving in Ethiopia. After all, Zenzele has grown up in Zimbabwe, not Rhodesia, as her mother had. Shiri is impressed and in awe of this daughter that protests inhumane treatment of others and petitions foreign governments.

Through the letter her mother writes to her, readers are treated to a history of Rhodesia and the fight for independence that resulted in Zimbabwe. Interesting to note is Shiri's lament that what was envisioned as successful post-colonial life was rooted mostly in material success. In the rush to claim what colonialists had, the new Zimbabwe adapted the British culture and began to reject their own.

As the children of Zimbabwe go abroad to study, there's the fear that they won't return, as one of Shiri's cousins did, and if they do return, they will have completely forgotten their roots and culture. The hope is always that they go out in the world and absorb what they can from other cultures and bring it back to their country and continent. Though she's proud of her, Zenzele's leaving is Shiri's biggest dream and potential nightmare.

I loved this book because even though it was a history lesson, it didn't feel like one. So many of the lessons that Shiri passes on to Zenzele, and so many of the experiences she speaks about, are similar to those that all mothers pass on their daughters. Others are lessons that I recognize as those passed on to me, that seem race-specific as an African-American, that I've also passed on to my daughter. Things such as how to react when you're mistaken for a store clerk when you're obviously not dressed in the store uniform or being talked down to because the assumption is that your skin color means you're intellectually inferior..

There are so many lovely features that shall make you conspicuous among the flock. One of these is your color. In our country, you are accustomed to every shade from caramel to charcoal. Overseas, they do not have an eye for our rainbow. To them, we are all one burdensome color: black...Let no one define you or your country.

I could go on and on about all of the great nuggets of wisdom that Shiri imparts on Zenzele, but I'm really hoping you'll pick this up and give it a read for yourself. I can promise you that you won't be disappointed. And as Bill Cosby used to say on Fat Albert, "You just might learn something."

I knew when I started this challenge that there might be some books I wouldn't get because of cultural differences. Two weeks in and I've come across that first book. I really wanted to like Kitchen, but it was strange and otherworldly. It was a huge hit in Japan though, so perhaps it's just me.

Though the book has one name, it's actually two short stories. The first, Kitchen, tells the story of Mikage. Most people have a favorite room in their house and for Mikage, it's the kitchen. However, it's more than just her favorite room, it's where she feels most comfortable. So when her last living relative dies and she's offered a chance to move in with a classmate and his crossdressing father, she gladly accepts, based on the level of comfort she feels in their kitchen.

In the second short, Moonlight Shadow, young Satsuki mourns the loss of her boyfriend. Though she's comforted by the presence of her deceased boyfriend's brother, who dresses in the school uniform of his deceased girlfriend, she longs to see Hitoshi again. An encounter with a stranger on her morning run offers her that opportunity, but only if everything goes according to plan.

Both stories dealt with death and crossdressing men. I don't even know what to do with that honestly. I've not read anything else from the author, so I don't know if these are focused on in her other works. It just seems strange that both topics would play such prominent roles within the same book.

Sandra wrote: "Hello all, I'm signed up and ready to go.

I read and recommend adult literary fiction at Fresh Ink Books:

http://freshinkbooks.blogspot.ca/"

Thanks for sharing! I'll be sure to check it out.

It's finally here! I came up with the idea for this challenge last September and I've been patiently waiting for 2013 to roll around. Unsure of what the Books: Passports to the World challenge is? If you've always wanted to travel, but it's just not in the budget, this challenge is for you. The goal of the challenge is to read a book a week set in a different country.

There are just under 200 recognized countries in the world today, my plan is to come up with books set in 52 of those places. Why 52? There are 52 weeks in a year, so each Friday I'll be posting a review of a book from one of the countries.

The challenge will run from January through December 2013. Read as many or as few books from the group bookshelf. Suggest books from countries around the world. Start discussions about books you've really liked or really disliked. Engage! The group will pick one book each quarter to discuss in a Google Hangout. If you prefer Facebook instead of Goodreads, by all means, join that group.

If you're looking for books to add to your list, please feel free to check out the challenge bookshelf, where I'm tracking what I'm reading, as well as alternative books for those that want to read from a particular country, but may not want to read the book I've picked.

Books have been suggested for several countries, and they're already on the shelves, but feel free to add books for the countries already listed and for any not mentioned. If you don't see a particular country on the Goodreads shelf, it's because I haven't found a book set in that country and no one has recommended one yet. If you're looking for a book from a specific country, simply click on the country name and books tagged with that name will pop up. As you add books, please make sure to tag them with the name of the country so that others can find books by country easily.

I've picked the following books so far from the list of suggestions submitted:

Afghanistan: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
China: Snow Flower and Secret Fan by Lisa See
India: Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Iran: A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri
Japan: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
North Korea: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
Peru: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
Zimbabwe: Zenzele: Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

If you follow me on Twitter (@Reads4Pleasure), tweets related to this challenge will include the hashtag #BP2W. Though the comment thread is always open on posts, in depth discussions will be held on the Facebook and Goodreads pages, so please remember to like or join the page/group.

Planning to blog about the challenge and the books you read? Leave a link to your blog in the comments so fellow readers can check out your reviews.

The book is set in a certain country.

Kiini wrote: "Okay, so we're all choosing our own books? We aren't reading the same books?"

You can read books already on the list and suggest books that aren't. We'll hold a discussion each quarter about a book already on the list. I'll let you know in January what book that will be and we'll discuss it in March.

Although the challenge won't officially kick off until 2013, I wanted to go ahead and add books to the shelves so you can start figuring out what you want to read in the upcoming months.

Books have been suggested for several countries, and they're already on the shelves, but feel free to add books for the countries already listed and for any not mentioned. If you don't see a particular country on a shelf, it's because I haven't found a book set in that country and no one has recommended one yet.

As you add books, please make sure to tag them with the name of the country so that others can find books by country easily.