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:
“Authoritarianism: Response to Police Misconduct? A Slap on the Wrist”
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 
I could not agree more. I remember when once upon a time we called these people ‘peace officers’ and their job was to serve and protect. Their violence is going WAY beyond bullying, too. Check out the Wikipedia article for police killings: They used lethal force 309 times in 2013 alone. I don’t know of any other country in the global north with stats like that. Nobody seems to collect how many pet dogs they kill but that number is absolutely huge. Google news reports them all the time. I’ve even seen footage of them killing old arthritic tail wagging dogs and dogs sleeping on porches. They’ve gone power mad with all their military toys. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2013
LikeLike
Yes, I was just listening to an item on NPR today or yesterday about the use of lethal force by the Border Patrol. Apparently it had to be spelled out again that kids throwing rocks FROM MEXICO do not need to be shot to death, since they are not a threat to the cops’ lives ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BORDER!
LikeLike
omg that just boggles my mind. I have been continuously astonished by the rudeness of people in various uniforms here in the U.S. It has to be a cultural thing because it is just so pervasive ….
LikeLike
Yes. The Dutch were extremely respectful of authority before WWII, always doing exactly what they were told by people in authority, like the police, and after WWII, gradually that changed, and when I grew up, anyway, we almost per definition had no automatic respect for authority. As a result, the police had to change. I was hired as a librarian at one of the five police academies when their training changed to include a lot more about society, and also about the role of the police during the German occupation. There are a lot of lessons Americans didn’t learn from WWII because the country itself was not part of the arena, and not accepting everything from the police is one of them.
LikeLike
Plus, I think that because America practices perpetual war that the whole culture is geared to glamorize violence. When they stopped drafting people they had to create an army of mercenaries recruiting from the economically desperate and the morally bankrupt.
LikeLike
Hm, not that the economically desperate and the morally bankrupt are necessarily the same people. But yes, there definitely seems to be this idea that cops get to be tough guys all the time.
LikeLike
Yeah. I meant two different categories of people who tend to sign up. It sure would be nice if police departments would consider recruiting problem solvers instead of thugs.
LikeLike
They are supposed to be public servants are they not? Yet they constantly harass citizens as though that is their real purpose. Those citizens you mentioned were lucky that they weren’t shot on the spot which they may have been had they been persons of color and it was night time. Once We had police show up to our racially diverse school in full riot gear when they were notified that there was a fight going on in the cafeteria. When they arrived it was just a HS brawl between a few students so one of the officers waded through the crowd of students watching until he fell to the ground at which point “Officer down!” was shouted by the other policemen who then commenced beating all students to the ground because anyone who was in that cafeteria was then considered a combatant. The police seem to have their own rules and regulations and they all lead towards violence as the answer to any problem, which they seem all too happy to provide should you not have one.
LikeLike
Yes, it’s disgusting. They need to remember who pays their salary.
LikeLike
Been outraged for years, but it’s been a lonely place. Check out the murder of Nick Christie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ajHN4cXiA&list=PLCoNz4DrrR5L9TtiqXmOymuxYUmtZTGJf&index=12
Needless to say, the Christie family settled with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office for an undisclosed amount, leaving the taxpayer to pay the bill. Come to Lee County Fl. at your own risk, because no one committed this crime inside a locked county facility with no witnesses and self erasing surveillance video.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/nick-christie_n_2696234.html
There is lots more,but no one wants to hear it and I could go on all day and not finish. To the best of my knowledge no one was fired, suspended or convicted, nor will there ever be any consequences for the officers involved, only taxpayers will see an increase in their bills and not know what for.
LikeLike
Wow. And notice how all these videos of outrage are about cops abusing their powers against white people. Black people would perpetually have no more battery power left on their phones if they had to film every misbehavior the cops perpetrated against them. Ugh!
LikeLike