To Read & To Write

  The Barefoot Woman - a title not referring to woman, singular, as suggested grammatically, but instead to a pluralism of each woman whose life has traversed Rwanda, and Africa more generally... the numerous who have walked and worked, loved and cared, by the wounded and hardened soles of their feet. Deeply transformative, the memoir is subtly theatrical, depicting, scene-by-scene, the daily lives of the children, women, and men affected by the violence in Rwanda. The story's hand does not fall heavy on historical detail or context, but instead fills the narrative with full, brilliant, and vibrant evocations of Mukasonga's growing years: her mother's building of a traditional inzu behind their house, the cultivation of precious sorghum and other crops, the tending of feet (and how her mother tried to give her toes "eyes" to soften the blows, to no avail), the delicate and rambunctious process of marriage proposals, the comparison of gorgeous women to the worship...

  A collection of Greta Thunberg's speeches from her travels in 2018 and 2019, No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference is a wrenching written account of her tireless determination to spread solid information - indeed, the Facts - about the global Climate Emergency that is a hallmark moment of the 21st century, not to mention for humanity's epoch in totality. Thunberg introduces herself simply. She just barely mentions her accolades, her academic history, her work history. The most personal she gets is very personal, talking about her fraught fight with her parents to strike for the climate, her younger sister that she worries for, how she misses her dogs, and the collective future of humankind that has found itself hanging in the balance. She leaves the audience with an appropriate onslaught of numbers, percentages, data-driven information regarding how much time (10 - 15 years, if that) we have to turn the Climate Emergency around and what we need to do about it (decidedly...

  While perhaps lacking the political urgency of the present in connecting the dots between economic instability, racial injustice, and climate change on a local and global scale, The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds by Gavin Van Horn (2018) nevertheless brings an overarching, holistic point of view to the contradictory landscape of Chicago, Illinois. Chicago, one of the most well known cities around the globe, albeit notorious, is spared its grimier history and violent present in a sweeping narrative about the interconnections, oppositions, and magnetism between the biological and the industrial, the natural and the technological. Van Horn presents less of an attempt to merge the two oppositions and instead gives more of a push towards a revelation of a greener, lusher, wilder, woodier, more Arcadian world that seeps through Chicago's crevices, cracks, potholes, and crumbled houses, buildings, and towers, reminding the audience that despite the city's push fo...

Larry Itliong was a Filipino-American political activist between the years of 1929 (when he arrived in the United States) and 1977 (when he died in the U.S.). "Journey for Justice" chronicles his entire life, including his childhood in the Philippines, leading up to his arrival in America and then following his steps as an advocate for Filipino Workers Rights in California, then finally to the creation of the Filipino Workers Union.  For an elementary school children's picture book, this story is hefty, though this is understandable: the information needs to come out somehow, and this short biography explains as much as possible in the length allotted. "Journey for Justice" offers a fine crafting of history (for all ages). An important part of the text covers the Philippines under U.S. colonialism - and the subsequent schools in which children were taught English and fed propaganda proclaiming U.S. greatness which mentions the abuse the children suffered if...

An elegantly illustrated and elegantly written book about a young boy who lives by the sea and whose grandfather has just passed away. In honor of his grandpa, he builds a tiny ship on the beach and sails away, across the ocean and into the stars. With soothing and calming colors, the finely detailed illustrations prompt looking carefully and naming both objects of technology as well as those found in nature. I love that this book focuses on the idea of discovery yet draws upon ancient folklore and myth to light the way of the child's (and adult's) imagination.

This fast-paced yet contemplative thriller by Japanese writer Tomohito Moriyama and translated into English by J.D. Wisgo brings up all the best topics and themes in excellent science fiction: artificial intelligence, duty vs. personal inclinations, euthanasia, paranoia, and all kinds of questions regarding human nature itself. Two Of Six: A Captain’s Dilemma tells the story of the captain of a spaceship carrying six passengers. When the spaceship malfunctions and starts losing its supply of oxygen, how does the captain decide which passengers should take the extra spacecraft back home, a spacecraft which can only save two people? The captain’s only close companion is the A.I. robot assigned to work with him. How does she influence his decisions? And, as A.I., is she capable of making purely objective decisions? Moriyama, influenced by Isaac Asimov, writes a compelling plot-driven story putting philosophy in action. Though Two Of Six does not provide rich visual landsc...

At first “More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales” by Robert Bly (2018) may seem like an over-analysis of children’s stories. Even taken as the psychologically dense stories for adults that they really are, Bly’s writing is a bit jarring at first, to the point of one wondering whether his opinions have come out of unreflective musing, or the thin air, being too far-fetched to be graspable. But rest assured – the man knows damn well that he is right in his thoughts on the power and depth of these tales as pieces of cultural history worth the time of true poetic examination. Readers will pick up on this feeling of righteousness presented within the pages. Slowly, Bly no longer is seen as the crazy professor but instead, a sage of interpretation, believable if only because of an honest to goodness obscurity that finally brings a special common sense grounded in critical thought. Simply, it is hard to detect any of Bly’s ideology at work here – which makes this the perfect book for ...

“Educated: A Memoir” by Tara Westover, is the harrowing account of one girl’s journey in rebuilding herself as an individual apart from the girl who was emotionally and physically abused during childhood and teenage years. It was Tara Westover’s biological family, who prided themselves on an extreme form self-sufficiency and self-reliance that claimed all government ties as work of the devil, who perpetrated this abuse. Despite this, Tara’s early years were not without beauty. Growing up next to a massive mountain her family nicknamed “The Indian Princess” for its changing colors during the warmer seasons, rural Idaho was an almost sacred landscape to roam wild and free in, as well as a grand backdrop to contemplate existence itself: “Of course I *did* exist. I had grown up preparing for the Days Of Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World Of Men f...