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:
“Trump is the Republican Candidate: It’s a Bit Late to Face American Fascism”
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 took Trump, as the logical next step in American politics’ downward spiral, to open some eyes.” While I share your frustration and bewilderment over the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, I want to challenge the idea that America is on a downward political spiral. Parts of it may be, but if you step back from the political noise that passes for daily news and look at the longer term trends instead, you come to a different conclusion. The country as a whole is steadily getting more tolerant and progressive, and the trend in this direction is accelerating. A fast rate of change will naturally produce a backlash, and the size of the backlash will ebb and flow in proportion to the latest successes in the progressive trend, and there have been many successes in the last few years.
The popularity of Trump is not a triumph of the conservative right in American politics – it is actually a refutation of it on many issues. He was one of the most progressive Republican candidates in terms of his stance on the culture war issues of abortion, LGBTQ rights, and support by the religious right. Regrettably, he does appeal to those who desire a strong authoritarian leader, more so than any other candidate in the race. He has also been appealing to the racist fears in society, something that has always been present though it’s gradually declining. The overt racism in our society will continue to decline in the long term whether Trump gets elected or not, just look at the polls of people under 30 and the trend is obvious.
I don’t know who will win the election in November. The best analysis still has Clinton on top, but this has been a very difficult race to predict, and unpredictable events could easily swing the results one way or another. The noise that passes for daily news does a poor job of putting the big picture into context. Just remind yourself of two things: (1) only 23% of the people voting in the primaries so far voted for Trump, and (2) if the presidential election were held tomorrow pitting Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump, Bernie would win in a landslide of epic proportions. That’s tell you what you really need to know about the bigger long term picture.
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True. Like MLK said, the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Nevertheless, we could be in for a huge step backward if Trump is elected. As far as Trump’s stance is concerned: I don’t think he really has one. It’s whatever falls out of his mouth at any given moment, and it also greatly depends on who his audience is. I agree that the numbers show that if there were an election tomorrow, Bernie Sanders would win, but it’s not tomorrow, and if Bernie Sanders became the candidate, that would be the first time he’s ever scrutinized. So far it’s been in both Clinton and Trump’s interest to keep him in the race and not piss off his supporters too much. I hope you’re right and all will end well, or at least not Trump. I’m just not in a very optimistic mood. I know only a small percentage has voted for Trump to begin with, and you’d think that cooler minds would win, but those would have to be the special delegates, and they are falling over themselves to show how spineless they are.
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Good post and good link. The Donald is appalling, but many of his supporters are more so. Ignorance, militarism, nationalism and religiosity are a poisonous combination.
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