This post doesn’t live here anymore. It migrated to my other blog:
The Big No-No: An Outsider on American Fascism,
where it resides under the title:
What Folks Have Been Reading
WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING
In the late 60s Richard Proenneke built his own cabin in the Alaskan wilderness with only a few simple tools. He spent most of the rest of his life there. Sam Keith fleshed out Proenneke's diary of his first 16 months, when he was making his home by a lake. I love these kinds of books!
An old Oji-Cree healer and her nephew canoe down a river in Canada, away from the world of white people. They both have to come to terms with their past. The woman has lost most of her tribe and the young man is traumatized from his recent experience in the Belgian trenches of World War One. My second book by Boyden. Can't say enough about him.
An incredibly comprehensive history of everything related to slavery in the Southern United States, from the beginning of the colonies to the end of the Civil War. Over 700 pages and I took over 30 pages of notes. I will be sharing over many posts to come!
Hamid's debut novel. I love this author. A young man in Lahore, Pakistan, is the victim of love, drugs, obsession, the class system and his complete lack of self-awareness.
A golem, created in Poland and brought to life on a ship to America, and a jinni who was trapped in a flask a thousand years ago and released in New York -- the most unusual immigrants you'll ever meet.
The only part of her life a Korean woman can control is her body, so she withdraws into it. Harrowing.
Autobiography lightly disguised as a novel about the son of Southern migrants growing up on the streets of Harlem, New York City, in the 1940s and 50s. Written like you're hearing the whole story in a bar. Quite a feat.
The story of a man struggling to make a living in Morocco. No plot, no clearly defined characters, but fascinating in its authenticity.
Pakistani man tells an American about his experience as a college student and employee of an assessment firm in America years ago. Smart, nuanced and pretty darn honest considering the unreliable narrator.
Wow! The answer to the inane platitudes about how all parents love their children and how children should always respect their parents. The protagonist must come to terms with his deeply flawed immigrant parents in order to change himself.
Seven short stories about life during the Kim Il-sung regime, by a writer who still lives and works in North Korea, were smuggled out of the country and translated. Mind-boggling stuff.
A 15-year-old autistic narrator wants to know who killed a neighbor's dog, and ends up much further out of his comfort zone than he planned. Wonderful read!
In politics, education, religion, agriculture, business--it turns out that dumbing down has been here from the start.
Fifty years of Istanbul seen through the eyes of a street vendor who migrates to the city as a young boy. It's also a window into the complicated dance between men and women in Turkey.
Hey, don't laugh, at least I'm trying.
A Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with six other people on a tiny island off the coast of Maine all winter in 1873. A woman in the present researching the Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with three other people on a tiny sailboat. What could possibly go wrong?
A man stuck between two worlds in more ways than one. Fascinating!
Historical novel about early contacts between first nations and the French in Canada. Beautifully written story that doesn't pull any punches. I bought his other two novels right away.
Beautifully written. By my children's favorite English and Creative Writing teacher! It's got rave reviews and we're all very proud of her.
Suki Kim is a Korean-American journalist. She poses as an evangelical Christian posing as an English teacher at a school for the sons of North Korea's elite. Her experience and the information she manages to get via writing assignments are incredible. Definitely a lot more eye-opening that any CNN special.
This. Explains. Everything!!!
Why has Islam not undergone a reformation like Christianity? Why is it so easy for Islamic extremist groups like IS to recruit young muslims? What would it take for Islam in fundamentalist Islamic countries to enter modernity? Does the West have a role to play?
Amazing! A man wanders endlessly through a dreamscape, becoming other people, himself in the past, everything is fluid. Kafkaesque disconnect between people and their different needs.
A multi-layered novel about the history of Libya. A fast read, but one you can repeat and find something new each time.
Twelve Americans go missing in Burma/Myanmar during a tour. Touching and hilarious, but mostly hilarious.
The most unusual murder mystery I've ever read. Incredible writing. It haunted me for days.
The quote on the front mentions that these stories are exhilerating. I couldn't disagree more. They are almost unbearably painful to read, and yet I couldn't put them down. Very well done, apart from the third story, which is written in the second tense. Please let me know if you know of ONE story that works in second tense.
Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 
It isn’t obvious, is it? If you really want to make Americans uncomfortable, point out that Russia is doing the same thing in Crimea the U.S. did in Texas and Hawaii, only with stronger claims of legitimacy based on historical ties.
Seriously, though, none of my (U.S.) history books had pictures of the layout of slave ships. It was all “yay Harriet Tubman, glad that’s over.” There was better coverage of the Holocaust. Though slavery was at least portrayed as bad, unlike what we did to the indigenous populations, which was still glorified and romanticized.
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Wow. To me that picture of a slave ship is iconic. Yes, there seems to be a lot of attention here to individuals and their achievements, focusing on the positive, but no real overview of what happened and how bad it was. As for Native Americans, one of my Dutch readers has requested that I write about the Thanksgiving story and its truth and fiction, so I’ll be addressing that somewhere around November.
Thanks for the comment!
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If I may…. to partially quote your line… “The Union Army won and Lincoln immediately abolished slavery throughout the country.” I realize that your intended audience is being provided a “basic” overview of slavery in America but the American Civil War itself is one of America’s most complex historical episodes. From the first feelings of political discord as early as our disassociation with England, to the way the war was even conducted… and the myths surrounding Lincoln, the War was a complicated growing pain for our nation. To summarize that “the Union Army won” rather suggests that the military victory also was a victory over the hearts and minds of the South and that those defeated simply went home back to doing what they did before the fighting started. Yeah.. the Union Army won the military victory to preserve the Union as one but that victory was just the initial battle for racial equality that would last another 150 years.
But my real concern is about your remark that once the war was won Lincoln abolished slavery. Not really true or accurate. During the war Lincoln, after the Union Army had achieved a battlefield victory, felt the timing was right (motivated more by political timing rather than some moral high ground) to issue his famous Emancipation Proclamation. This document did not “free the slaves”. It was a Presidential order freeing the slaves in all ten southern states in the rebellion. It did not free any slaves in border states or southern states friendly with the Union, In other words.. it was not every state in America.
But.. having said that… the 13th Amendment ending slavery in all of America, was introduced and debated through Congress while the war was still going on as early as 1863. Lincoln feared his Emancipation Proclamation might be reversed after the war and pushed republicans in Congress to introduce the amendment. By December, 1865, (Lincoln was assassinated that April) after the defeated Southern states in the rebellion had reformed their governments, Congress passed the amendment… and the required three-fourths of the 36 states at the time ratified the amendment and it became the law of the land.
An interesting post script to this… a few states did in fact reject or simply failed politically through their respective state legislatures to ratify the 13th Amendment but because three-fourths had made it law the dissenting states really made no difference. A couple of those states did in fact revisit their contribution… Deleware ratified it at late as 1901… Kentucky did the same in 1976… and Mississippi, after rejecting it in the 1865 vote, came back and ratified it March 16, 1995.. and later “certified” it only last year… February 7, 2013.
I so wish they taught this stuff in school when I was a kid..
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Thanks for your detailed reply!
Yes, I know it was a lot more complicated and I know that Lincoln was rather opportunistic when it came to slavery and all that. Those of my readers who want to, can read your comment, but I figured I’d give the big picture in this first post, or I’d lose most of my readers! I know my 6th-grade daughter was lost when she had to learn all those particulars of emancipation and all the amendments and I can’t blame her. Kudos to you for knowing it all!
As for the complicated feelings of the South after the war was over and the repercussions of slavery and the civil war to this day–well, that’s why I feel a few more posts coming on…
Thanks, Doug.
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Forgive me for tossing out another tidbit, especially if you have posts to follow, but Lincoln, as with most Americans of the day, did not have the opinion that freed slaves should stay in America, and most certainly they were not considered any sort of social or political equal to whites. It was felt that since “they” were brought to this country against their will to endure indentured servitude that they would naturally want to go back to Africa. If the former slaves didn’t want to go back they were too uneducated and ignorant to know what they wanted so whites of the day felt the decision should be made for them. Obviously rediculous reasoning even back in those days. But it does illustrate that “freeing the slaves” did not make them equal nor erase all the inferiorority stereotypes held by abolitionist whites.
Your readers might want to consider renting the movie “Amistad”… a very nicely done (and underrated) 1997 Spielberg movie (many Hollywood stars) depicting the 1839 revolt of slaves on a slave ship. One of many messages presented in the film was when the Supreme Court ordered the slaves returned to Africa. When they returned they found their own country in a civil war.. and the starring slave character in the movie realizes his family was gone, having been sent into slavery, not to America but with another warring tribe, thusly suggesting that slavery can have many forms and is just not limited to any one society; it’s a trait of man.
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Gosh Doug, that was going to be one of my next posts! There were indeed all sorts of shades of gray when it came to what it meant to be a free person of color, both during and after slavery and in the eyes of both blacks and whites. I’m going to address all that. Yes, I was impressed with Amistad and you’re right, it never got the attention it deserved.
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I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.
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I remember the picture of a slave ship in my history book I had in secondary school.
The negative side the Dutch played in slave trade is something that gets much more attention in the Netherlands now; as when I went to school
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Yes, that’s about time! Thanks for your comments.
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Yes, that image and what accompanied it is now back into my mind, I can almost see the history book it was in in my hands! Thanks for tackling this even in several episodes. Of course I read Gone with the wind, Uncle Toms cabin and Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer, so I have a vague image in my mind which sort of is made up from what I learned and what I’ve read. So Thanks for elaborating on your blog! I’m following with interest.
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I’m glad you like the posts. My very last post in this series will be about books and movies.
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