Volunteering Around the Globe: Life-Changing Travel Adventures

#434
Title: Volunteering Around the Globe: Life-Changing Travel Adventures
Author: Susan Stone
Publisher: Capital Books
Year: 2008
207 pages

This reference book provides a good starting point for people who would like to volunteer in international settings and aren't sure where to start. The inclusion of Jewish aid organizations is refreshing. There are many personal reports and a good list of initial resources. Structurally, it needs an index; for decision-making purposes, it needs more discussion of how to evaluate whether to volunteer in a corrupt organization or social structure.

The Diamond of Darkhold (Book of Ember #4)

#433
Title: The Diamond of Darkhold (Book of Ember #4)
Author: Jeanne DuPrau
Publisher: Yearling
Year: 2008
295 pages

A satisfying conclusion to this series (essentially a trilogy and and out-of-sequence prequel). As in the first book, Lina and Doon take on a quest for better quality of life based on an uninterpretable document from the Builders. Though they encounter obstacles and belligerents, one can't really say they meet enemies. A hallmark of this series is that ultimately most people, even those in opposition, are rendered benign or ineffective over the course of the story, making this a good series for people who like dystopian themes but not the distress of a true dystopia.

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

#432
Title: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced
Authors: Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui
Translator: Linda Coverdale
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Year: 2010
189 pages

This is a straightforward account by a young Yemeni girl of her arranged marriage to an abusive man much older than she. Where it matters is that the author successfully petitioned for a divorce, setting precedent and inspiring other girls and young women to contest forced marriages.

My engagement with Nujood and her story was interfered with by what I presume is Delphine Minoui's writing as well as the fact of translation. I didn't experience Najood's first-person story as her own, but as one told to and interpreted by an adult. Her voice was rendered confusingly as both too mature and overly cute. If you can put this aside, this is a quick book and a good look at female life in less privileged parts of the world.

Spook Country

#431
Title: Spook Country
Author: William Gibson
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Year: 2007
379 pages

Spook Country is less about its plot than it is about the idea that activities and images occur around you and you may never see or know about them. This is illustrated by a number of related narratives and descriptions that demonstrate this idea in action.

Spook Country is not about the story, but about the witnessing of the story. Nominal protagonist Hollis's role is to see, not to do. "Spook country" here takes multiple forms--CIA spooks, spirits, systema, virtual art installations, data and fake data, radiation. The tale of the locative art is also the tale of the mysterious shipping container--you can only detect it with specialized access, but it's there. Doing what? Sometimes just existing, and at other times meaning something.

Just as Tito's father was shot for no good reason, sometimes meaning is obscure or inheres only in our perceptions and fantasies, not in the data itself. Numinous moments are followed by more benzodiazepines. However, unanswered questions about meaning bother me: What's in it for Bigend? What's the danger of observers? Why does Bobby sleep or not sleep in particular squares of the grid? The answer "it doesn't mean anything" is as unsatisfying as the explanations "it was all a dream," "it was the drugs," or "he was insane."

Though "selling out" doesn't appear to be an explicit theme, it happens several times near the end. Perhaps this is to highlight that there are principles, and there is pragmatism.

I thought this was Gibson's best and most substantial novel since Idoru, which I am apparently alone in liking.

Never Let Me Go

#430
Title: Never Let Me Go
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2005
294 pages

This melancholic novel is science fiction to the extent that it is an alternate 1980s (more or less) where, as we learn gradually, the protagonist and all of her school friends are clones who have been grown as organ donors. However, the reader doesn't learn this until far into the narrative, where one of the teachers names it explicitly in a moment of conflict and frustration. Though this is something of a bombshell for the reader, the narrator and her friends have an overt response (yes, we know that), and a covert response (they're a bit embarrassed by the teacher's outburst). The recognition of this discrepancy between the reader's response and the narrator's is a good encapsulation of why this novel is truly creepy--the children all know they're being raised for parts, but they keep this knowledge diffuse and suppressed. In some ways this is an ultimate British novel, the kind I would read as an adolescent and wonder, what just happened? what gave offense? why has this relationship suddenly ended? It was all too subtle for me, and Ishiguro turns that subtle, squeamish sensibility into a determinant in the book's action. The students have been slowly but clearly taught that their duty is to become spare parts, but they don't think about this much, or question it, or really even talk about it. Thus, theme #1 is about inevitability and the passivity of a British underclass. This is no Logan's Run--there is no protest, no flight, no rage against the machine. In fact, after their education the clones wander around more or less aimlessly until they just decide it's time to become carers (people who take care for the donors) and, after that, to request to become donors. Donors die in no more than four donations. One does one's duty, in one's understated and constrained way.

The second theme is existential. The directors of Hailsham, the school that this group of clones attends, is on the model of A Fine British Education for the Colonials. This is partly due to altruistic scruples, and partly to the attempt to demonstrate that the clones have souls, i.e., are (like those persons from colonial climes) fully human. This is revealed toward the end of the book, but the form it takes throughout is the pervasive, underlying question of what gives a life its meaning. Like the students in Lev Grossman's dyspeptic The Magicians, the Hailsham students find that being a special student at a special school does not necessarily prepare you to do anything. Similarly, Octavian Nothing learned that no matter how erudite and cultured he and his mother became, they were still just property. The Hailsham students grasp for straws of meaning where they can--in the teacher's words, in made-up narratives about the teachers and each other, in their relationships, and in their interpretations of Hailsham's policies. Ultimately, none of it matters. The Hailsham graduates will still become donors, no matter how beautiful the art they produce or what literary works they read. Again, this is all excruciatingly understated, but definitely present. It certainly contrasts with the intense anger expressed by writers in formerly colonized countries, who go to school only to discover that the promise of freedom is a lie, and that their opportunities and options are not equal. That the narrator of Never Let Me Go is reasonably happy with her life is more chilling than any talk of clones or souls.

Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human

#429
Title: Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human
Author: Michael Chorost
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Year: 2005
238 pages

Michael Chorost, already partially deaf, suddenly went completely deaf. More than just a memoir of this experience of deafness and acquiring a cochlear implant, Rebuilt's narrative is intertwined with Chorost's thoughts and speculations about becoming a cyborg (that is, a human with "software that makes if-then-else decisions and acts on the body to carry them out" (p. 40). This is a good book to read with Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto," which Chorost references extensively, and Myron Uhlberg's Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love.

Chorost's musings can sometimes be tiring. Put the book down and return to it later--it's worth following him through the whole thought, but sometimes his style can be wearing as he delves into semiotics and representation.

Note to Houghton Mifflin: What's wrong with this statement? "...I would find an oak seed in the yard, break its green whirlybird wings in half, and paste the sap-sticky center on my nose...." (p. 32). Clearly, copy editing is a lost art.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

#428
Title: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Author: Carrie Ryan
Publisher: Delacorte
Year: 2009
318 pages

This has been tagged as a young adult dystopian novel, and while I agree with "young adult," it's dystopian only in the sense that all zombie novels are dystopian--a spreading horror, present or past, destroys much of civilization. Perhaps it shades slightly more into dystopian territory, in that a character alludes to the Unconsecrated--this village's name for the zombies--having originated in scientific attempts to make people immortal. However, this aside is so tangential to the action of the story, so peripheral to the central narrative, that, while intriguing, it is not a sufficiently central point to support calling this a dystopia.It is young adult horror with science fiction elements.

There are things I can live without knowing. I don't need the whole back story; in many ways it's more interesting not to have a huge revelation about the long, long ago time and how things came to be. Perhaps some of that is filled in in the next book; perhaps not. What we should have learned: Why on earth the Sisterhood allows infected people to join the Unconsecrated rather than chopping off their heads; how or why both Mary's and Gabrielle's villages are overrun; why Mary and her group of survivors assume the members of the Sisterhood who bolted themselves into the Cathedral didn't survive; why Mary thinks that Gate I would lead to the ocean. There's more, but these are the big points. More irritating, and constituting plot disruptions/bad writing: If the zombies can pile up enough to get to an upstairs story, why don't they do this with the village fences? Who does maintenance on the path fences beyond the Guardians' range? If zombies can take down sturdy, braced wooden doors in a relatively short time, why can't they take down cyclone fencing even more quickly?

Psychologically, this is a novel about claustrophobia. The (seemingly) lone village, the tiny beacon holding back the unending, zombie-filled forest. The stern and secret-keeping Sisterhood, a religious order that controls the village, its inhabitants' lives, and access to historical and current knowledge. The young girl, who wants to marry for love, break out of the village's tight periphery, and  re-discover this "ocean" her mother described to her in her childhood. It is also about selfishness; more specifically, selfishness rewarded. Mary, the protagonist, is cut from the same histrionic and narcissistic cloth as Twilight's Bella. She is moody, impulsive, self-focused and self-preoccupied, willing to put her ambivalent desires ahead of (as far as she knows) the well-being of everyone in the world. Why is Travis attractive? For the same reason Edward is: Because the female protagonist says so.

If I were still back in my text deconstructin' days, I'd say that Mary's fervent desire for a particular kind of love, bolstered by the repeated symbol of the ocean (Freud's oceanic oneness, q.v.) and the image of the ocean-like forest, is what causes the village fence to be breached, admitting the endless tide of Unconsecrated who consume or infect just about everyone, converting them from individuals to an undifferentiated, oceanic mass of zombies. In psychoanalytic terms, it's the ambivalent desire to return to the pre-individuated ego state (bonus for you Kleinians: Snapping and rending included!). Since Mary's village understands the zombies in religious terms, a translation of the above might be that desire casts one out of paradise; this Mary has original sin. While Mary doesn't lust after a creature of darkness as Bella does, this theme is present, though displaced onto Mary's mother. The story is that Mary's mother allows herself to be bitten by her husband (who is now a zombie) because Mary isn't there to stop her. Mary is too busy getting creeped out by her friend and nice-guy Harry, who in a prefiguring of this zombie/ocean trope grasps her hands under water (she's doing laundry) and initiates a courtship. However, it's not clear that Mary would have prevented her mother from being bitten by her father; Mary, though devastated, also apparently finds it all unbearably meaningful and argues with the Sisterhood, and her brother, that her mother should be permitted to join her father as part of the unknowing, uncaring zombie horde. Who can say that the addition of Mary's mother and of Gabrielle (a parallel sacrifice by the Sisterhood) isn't the tipping point that allows the Unconsecrated to breach the fence?

At the end of the novel, having navigated the oceanic forest and seeing her love interest (who turned out not to be enough for her, anyway) zombified and castrated, I mean decapitated, by her, Mary reaches the real ocean. There, she immerses herself with, incidentally, a large number of zombies and chopped-up zombie parts. Then, to the lighthouse with an older man whose job is to decapitate the zombies who wash onto the beach. It wasn't her mom she wanted all along, it was her dad! Oedipal mystery solved.

Oh, and this bears little resemblance to The Hunger Games, with which I've seen it compared. Instead, think The Road, but with zombies instead of the charred ashes of a ruined civilization, and a whiny self-serving kid. Same ending, though: It's sad about the other(s), but now you're safe because you've found another claustrophobic enclave, where you can be protected (until the horror engulfs it as well).

Tunisian Mosaics: Treasures from Roman Africa (Conservation and Cultural Heritage Series)

#427
Title: Tunisian Mosaics: Treasures from Roman Africa (Conservation and Cultural Heritage Series)
Author: Aïcha Ben Abed
Translator: Sharon Grevet
Publisher: The Getty Conservation Institute
Year: 2006
Country: Tunisia
144 pages

An attractive and interesting overview of Tunisian mosaics, which are elaborate and extensive. Many of the mosaics pictured are at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, while others are at other museums in Tunisia or are still in situ. This guide provides the history of mosaic work in North Africa, and the history of Roman and post-Roman Tunisia in which the mosaics were made. It also describes the styles and themes of many pieces and is copiously illustrated. What you won't find here is a detailed history of mosaic-making in general, or much discussion of technique. I didn't miss it, and suspect most readers won't either.

Build It and They Will Come: Lessons from the Northern Economic Corridor: Mitigating HIV and Other Diseases

#426
Title: Build It and They Will Come: Lessons from the Northern Economic Corridor: Mitigating HIV and Other Diseases
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Year: 2009
38 pages
An interesting monograph on the social downside of road construction. On the one hand, roads bring commerce, opportunities, and health care. On the other, they bring prostitution and facilitate human trafficking, as well as increasing the risk of sexually transmitted infection. This well-written and even-handed document describes these risks, makes suggestions, and raises the question of who bears the responsibility for safety, security, and education when infrastructure is developed.

Broken Lives: Trafficking in Human Beings in the Lao People's Democratic Republic

#425
Title: Broken Lives: Trafficking in Human Beings in the Lao People's Democratic Republic
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Year: 2009
54 pages

While everything else I've read from Asian Development Bank is pretty straightforward and pragmatic, this document is full of inaccessible anthropological jargon, making it harder to read than many of ADB's English translations from other languages. The main contention seems to be that social disruption (such as dislocation or land-grabbing) disrupts social roles, which means it disrupts social status, therefore, if I follow correctly, meaning both that a vulnerability to trafficking is created and that intervention thus far has been and is doomed to be ineffective since it does not attend to status relationships. Confusing an interpretation of the jargon jumble is the frequent and abrupt introduction of other elements (such as HIV) without integration into the argument. As far as I can tell, this monograph is more about the risks of migration than about trafficking per se. I think, but I only have a doctorate in a related field.

As I was reading, I found myself wondering about internal (in-culture) trafficking as a phenomenon that may be socially different from external (outsider) trafficking (i.e., being sold by your family means something different from being stolen by slavers). I also wondered whether this distinction, if it indeed exists, is simply an expression of indignation from a former majority or less-vulnerable society to finding its circumstances changed and its (sic) women and children now commodified by a more powerful outside demand or force. This is a tangential musing, not a part of this document's disorganized material.

The Insider's Guide to the Peace Corps: What to Know Before You Go (2nd ed.)

#424
Title: The Insider's Guide to the Peace Corps: What to Know Before You Go (2nd ed.)
Author: Dillon Banerjee
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Year: 2009
192 pages

Banerjee provides a useful introduction to the Peace Corps experience in a series of 74 short, FAQ-like answers to questions like "Can I bring my pet overseas with me?", "What is the training like?", and "Will I be lonely?" This is useful and pragmatic. It's also an overview; the reader is unlikely to get a good sense of what the Peace Corps's mission is, what its interventions are based on, or what typical days in the different fields are like.

Banerjee answers questions about being gay, a minority, or older, but not about being a potential volunteer with disabilities. Most of the information seems to be up to date, though my experience with international calling in recent years has been of a steady increase in VOIP kiosks.

This would be a useful reference book for anyone thinking of making their first extended international journey, studying abroad, or getting their first job in another country. Specific country recommendations are relatively easy to find; an overview that ranges from money changing to "Will I get worms?" is welcome and less easy to come by.

The Significance of Referral Systems as a Response to Human Trafficking and Unsafe Migration

#423
Title: The Significance of Referral Systems as a Response to Human Trafficking and Unsafe Migration
Author: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Year: 2009
35 pages

This monograph describes ideal referral systems for use in trafficking situations, describing the infrastructure needed (such as trusted police officers, not just police officers) for complex prevention and intervention to function adequately. This includes identifying vulnerabilities to trafficking while also asserting that the major problem is that there are traffickers. That there is a market for trafficked people is less-well articulated.

It extends their potential utility to the arena of migration, arguing that an adequate referral network targeted to potential migrants would decrease trafficking by decreasing vulnerability, thus serving as a preventive mechanism.

The link above takes you to a free PDF of the monograph. Read with Somaly Mam's The Road of Lost Innocence for a good illustration of why trustworthy referral networks would be an excellent idea.

Finding Sustainable Livelihoods: A Case Study from Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary (PKWS), Koh Kong Province, Kingdom of Cambodia

#422
Title: Finding Sustainable Livelihoods: A Case Study from Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary (PKWS), Koh Kong Province, Kingdom of Cambodia
Authors: Nim Vantha, Ven Virak, & Sok Sotheavy
Publisher: KBNRM Learning Initiative
Year: 2002
30 pages

This monograph gives case examples of communities where mangrove deforestation for charcoal production, plus non-sustainable fishing techniques, have placed those communities at ecological and economic risk. A number of interventions are described, including education and training, use of more sustainable techniques (some of which work better than others at trial), and broader community development concerns such as drinking water and schools. A good case study that highlights the interconnectedness of multiple development efforts and considerations.

Legends of New Caledonia: A Collection of Legends from the Isle of Pines

#421
Title: Legends of New Caledonia: A Collection of Legends from the Isle of Pines
Editor: Jean-Claude Staudt
Translator: Hilary Roots
Illustrators: Island children
Publisher: Sitmar Cruises
Year: 1984
Country: New Caledonia (colonial collectivity of France)
31 pages

This collection of folk tales from New Caledonia may be illustrated by children, but it is not for children with delicate sensibilities. The stories have not been sanitized to make them less grim (or Grimm). People are eaten, animals chopped up, and in one case, a monster is defeated by a mighty enema blast.

A fun little collection if you can get hold of a copy. Color paintings by children illustrate the sometimes-grisly text.

Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone

#420
Title: Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone
Author: Larry Devlin
Publisher: Public Affairs
Year:  2007
Country:  Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa)
306 pages

Devlin is no stylist, but his account of his tenure as CIA Chief of Station, Congo (Kinshasa) will still hold your attention. Devlin was transferred to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a period of great and swift turmoil. Later, his superior attests that he has a skillful, excellent operative in the post. As Devlin comments, what else could he say? That in fact, he had installed a relatively unexperienced chief at a station that was supposed to be a sleepy backwater?

Devlin's narrative style is methodical, a straightforward recounting of events with only superficial commentary or analysis. When he does comment, it is typically to add a piece of evidence to his contention that though he was ordered to assassinate Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, he did not do so. I can't evaluate the veracity of this claim, but note that whatever Devlin's protestations, he  gives numerous unsurprising examples of collusion, cover-ups, and pragmatic lies on the part of all of the agencies involved. That there should therefore be a cover-up of a political assassination is not that great a stretch. However, Devlin says he finds the idea of assassination morally repugnant, and I have no reason to disbelieve him. That doesn't mean another U.S. or Belgian agent didn't do it.

I disagree with many of Devlin's political ideals, but appreciate his effort to articulate them. It says something about his ability to do so that I enjoyed reading this information-dense memoir.

Lord Sunday (Keys to the Kingdom #7)

#419
Title: Lord Sunday (Keys to the Kingdom #7)
Author: Garth Nix
Publisher: Scholastic
Year: 2010
320 pages

This seventh and concluding volume in the Keys to the Kingdom series has two tasks: To wrap up the action of the first 6 books, and to depict adolescent struggles with identity and responsibility.

As to the former, there is plenty of swashbuckling, giant pointy bugs, explosions, and the like. The plot points are resolved, though some characters and their motives remain a mystery. Why, for example, have none of the Trustees done more than allude to what they fear will happen when the Will of the Architect is re-assembled?

The thematic business is captured by Arthur's shift from a human boy to an otherworldly Denizen as he uses his power. Who is Arthur, and who is Lord Arthur? This question, which has recurred throughout the series, is answered in Lord Sunday. As the mortal children Arthur and Leaf take on more burdens and responsibilities, they are both nostalgic for the sense of safety they experienced before these events, and willing, though not always glad, to take on adult roles. I was pleased that this included real choices and sacrifices, both developmental and interpersonal.

From Tajikistan to the Moon: A Story of Tragedy, Survival and Triumph of the Human Spirit

#418
Title: From Tajikistan to the Moon: A Story of Tragedy, Survival and Triumph of the Human Spirit
Author: Robert Frimtzis
Publisher: Ecliptic Publishing
Year: 2009
Country: Tajikistan
376 pages

Frimtzis's memoir chronicles his experiences as a child and adolescent during World War II and its aftermath. After detailing a long interval as a Displaced Person, Frimtzis describes life in the U.S. from late adolescence to the present. It's very interesting to read a memoir by a Jew whose family fled further into the USSR. Though still beset by anti-Semitism, they were comparatively safer in the far Eastern portion of the Soviet empire. Ultimately, however, they returned to their home, and then to the West.

While central to Frimtzis's life story, both Tajikistan and the moon are somewhat peripheral to the narrative. "From Tajikistan" does not refer to his departure from his original home in Romanian-occupied Bessarabia, followed by the family's arduous flight across the USSR to Tajikistan, where they lived for over two years. Rather, Tajikistan is the starting point for the journey of return and beyond, culminating in his engineering work that contributed to the Apollo moon landing.

This is a self-published memoir, which shows in the difficulties with verb tense, long asides that disrupt the chronology, and the inclusion of what seems to be every detail the author remembers about his youth. While this is interesting, much of it is only of personal interest. I would have liked more description of the environs in which he lived and through which he traveled. There's a lot of it, but this is the part that I can't picture and with which I'm unfamiliar as a reader. The story picks up speed in the U.S. section; unfortunately, this material is less engaging for the American reader because we are familiar with the settings and themes of the immigrant's narrative. Nonetheless, Frimtzis's memoir grew on me and I appreciate it as a good addition to my understanding of the Jewish experience of World War II and its aftermath.

The Mistress's Daughter: A Memoir

#417
Title: The Mistress's Daughter: A Memoir
Author: A. M. Homes
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2007
251 pages

Aficionados of Homes's seductively creepy novels and short stories will enjoy her memoir, which is in many ways no less weird than her fiction. The first half describes how Homes, at that point an adult woman, learns that her birth mother wants to be in touch. Homes's part of the back story, and her speculations, hopes, and fears about this unknown mother who asserts her motherness, will be familiar to those who have gone through this experience themselves (and to their friends, who have heard these anxious concerns before). The uncovering of just who these biological parents were and what they are now to the author is riveting.

The drive to know, plus the drive to buffer the experience and any potential commitment, explains the second half of the book. Critics have found this section less engaging, but I enjoyed it more, because here we see Homes at work, sleuthing and poking and fantasizing. She portrays herself as both obsessed and resistant, creating a parallel experience for the reader. We see the psyche from whom her strange, compelling fictional characters arise, the bizarre tangents that are their genesis. We see her enter into a world of genealogical and internet research and expose both the voyeurism and frustrations that any amateur genealogist has encountered. We ultimately encounter the insoluble riddle: Who am I if other people control the proof of my identity.

This memoir makes me want to re-read all the Homes I have, and go find even more.

A Blessing over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother

#416
Title: A Blessing over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother
Author: Adam Fifield
Publisher: Perennial
Year: 2000
334 pages

Adam Fifield's family wound up fostering Soeuth, a Cambodian refugee whose first foster family was not a good fit. This memoir recounts Adam's experiences of and with Soeuth and Adam's biological brother, interspersed with stories from Soeuth's experiences during the Khmer Rouge period and in adulthood. I particularly enjoyed Fifield's account of accompanying Soeuth to Cambodia, which took place after the country was back under more normal Cambodian governance, but while the Khmer Rouge were still active in the Northern and more remote areas of the country. This was a quick memoir to read, and because Fifeld is telling the American family's version of the foster family experience, an interesting companion to books by Cambodian foster children, such as Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father and Lucky Child.

Editors and proofreaders: Do you really not know that "numb chuck" is, at best, a slang rendition of "nunchuck"?* Do you not see several words incorrectly used by Fifield? Cleaning this stuff up is your job!

*Yes, pedant friends, I know that nunchuck is an Anglicized version of nunchaku.