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s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]
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Books:
dystopia
(11)
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| 0593701569
| 9780593701560
| 0593701569
| 3.91
| 7,538
| Oct 31, 2024
| Feb 04, 2025
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really liked it
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‘Because if you aren’t unsettled, then there’ll be no sublime.’ Am I a person or am I just a stack of algorithmic data in a trench coat? And if ‘data i ‘Because if you aren’t unsettled, then there’ll be no sublime.’ Am I a person or am I just a stack of algorithmic data in a trench coat? And if ‘data is the new oil’ as data science entrepreneur Clive Humby said, are my consumer habits worth more than my humanity as corporate donations increasingly give CEOs unfettered access to politicians? Showing how the gap is rapidly shrinking between what was once far-flung futures in the cautionary sci-fi tales of yesteryears and our daily anxious present—almost as fast as the financial gap between rich and poor is widening—comes Gliff, Ali Smith’s first novel since her outstanding Seasonal Quartet. Full of razor-sharp social criticism and rebellious sentiments that skillfully balance the personal and political, Smith is as poetically profound and engaging as ever through her sagacious wit and wordplay. Gliff hits close to home, and hard. Set just a stone’s throw away from our present, Smith takes us through her bleakly portrayed ‘brave new unlibraried world’ alongside young siblings Briar and Rose (their joint namesake of Sleeping Beauty playfully nudging the notion on having to “get woke” and their burgeoning revolutionary praxis) left on their own in an unfamiliar town as they witness firsthand the horrors of society sliding into authoritarianism and sweeping out the unwanted. The unhoused, immigrants, whistleblowers, protestors and more all find themselves labeled “Unverifiables” and sought for arrest in this near-future that feels a natural step from Smith’s previous Brexit novels. Language, and the political and corporate erasure of co-opting of it, takes center stage in the world of Gliff where your data places you into oppressive government categories that defines your life. This story of siblings on the run with a stolen horse through a surveillance society isn’t quite a dystopian novel, yet is eerily prescient nonetheless and Gliff becomes a brave new world (as well as a riff on the famous novel by Aldous Huxley) and scathing examination on our present culture of online data, nationalistic fear mongering, and corporate control. It is heart wrenching yet encouraging as Smith guides us to consider the meaning of words consider freedom and how we ascribe meaning to our existence, shows how hope is found in defying authority and asks us to consider the ills of society in hopes we can ‘solve it by salving it.’ ‘Every classic old horse story I’ve ever chanced upon in this brave new unlibraried world deals with the bloodiness of humanity to other creatures as well as each other and more often than not ends in dutiful sadness as if the story, not totally broken, is at least broken in.’ Always the linguistic maestro, Smith demonstrates how language truly is ‘the tool of the tools,’ as sociologist Lev Vygotsky wrote, to find logical footholds in reality to understand, assess, and communicate the world around us. Yet, if ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,’ as Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, how does one combat an authoritarian society that stifles language, bans books and public education, co-opts the words of resistance, gives a corporate rebranding to terms, and removes the language to speak out? Such questions are a common theme for Smith, who recently addressed this in an article for The Guardian about the Sacco Gang: ‘Truth doesn’t stop being truth and justice doesn’t stop being justice just because powerful people or politics or institutions tell lies.’ Yet what avenues for truth and resistance are available when a corporate police State controls the meaning of words at will and their legal application such as in Gliff? When, say, an industry plant uses the government office to restrict the speech of private citizens, such as cowering from democratic congressional procedure to sign an executive order against fact checking or educating about misinformation. ‘Why do you think they call it a net? Why do you think they call it a web?’ In Smith’s novel Summer, it is questioned if such control of language can even limit our imaginations and actions. Charlotte, an optimistic young activist responds: ‘it depends what you can imagine. And that does tend to depend on the Zeitgeist of the time, and who and what are influencing a mass imagination.’ Smith takes dead aim at corporate social media—think Elon Musk using Twitter to manipulate algorithms to bolster right wing rhetoric—and they way average citizens become the product in marketing manipulation. Briar (or Bri) and Rose’s mother warns them away from the internet and the pitfalls of online propaganda: ‘Social media could do all sorts of good things but that too many people—and more, too many powerful systems—used it vindictively.’ In their present society, all people have a sort of Smartwatch that tracks their every move, people go around questioning each other and entering in their data, cameras and microphones lurk on every corner amassing endless surveillance and data. It is what social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff coined as ‘Instrumentarianism’ in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: ‘[Instrumentarianism is] the social relations that orient the puppet masters to human experience as surveillance capital wields the machines to transform us into means to others’ market ends.’ Or, simply put, power to monitor, manipulate, predict, and profit off what you can and can’t see or experience online. Zuboff warns that this push from tech companies along with increasingly getting into bed with government financially and through government contracts (typically surveillance) is leading to a government ruled by tech profits and full social surveillance in every aspect of our lives. Public and private, which has already occurred at the onset of this novel. ‘God help me, what can one woman do against the behemoth…’ ‘There are different realities,’ their mother says, ‘and the net is a reality with designs on general reality, and I’ll prefer it if you both experience the real realities as your foremost realities.’ While Briar may try to defend technological advances, such as AI allowing us to read scrolls that would otherwise ‘fall apart if you tried to open them into nothing but ashes,’ the mother replies we should all pay more attention ‘to what history tells us rather than all this endless congratulating ourselves for finding a new way to read it.’ She considers smartphones to be ‘liabilities,’ causing you to see the world ‘through it’ and not the real world (Mary Oliver would love this detail) which has marked the children as outsiders and threatening curiosity to everyone else. It makes for some of the most charming moments in the book, particularly with Rose—headstrong and charismatic—and the local boy Colon who views questioning people as his honorable duty. The siblings refusal to provide straightforward answers are less a look at deception and more a rather comedic gap in the general sense of the world and how to live within it. There is often a fine line between lies and storytelling and the latter, particularly with Rose, becomes a way to brush aside the veneer of State framing and see the mechanisms underneath. ‘Were we in our worded world the ones who were truly deluded about where and what we believed about all the things we had words for?.’ What is marketing but storytelling, and fiction, especially rebellious fiction full of social criticisms, is a way to counteract the corporate narrative. Smith once worked as an advertising copywriter and her books frequently lampoons the language of marketing as a method for control, such as in Girl Meets Boy when a company polluting the river that is the only source of water spins language to turn the public opinion on the local water protectors into terrorists. She discusses in an interview with NPR about how the term “slogan” is connected to the English word “slughorn” from the Gaelix “sluggern” or “war cry.” It is essentially a corporate battle cry. But fiction allows us to subvert their narratives, as she explains: ‘There is a kind of truth that can't be said any other way. I think it finds a way to say the things which are either inarticulable or being stopped from being said or are very, very, very difficult to articulate. I love that about fiction. It is ever, ever hopeful, regardless of its sometimes very dark subject matter.’ This is a dark novel indeed, but one that is full of hope. Those in power know nothing of hope, only profits, and the characters find fighting for a future where ‘people can be free of being made to be what data says they are’ is a hopeful outlook. ‘Does it make it easier to control other creatures, or even peoples, us deciding that because we don’t know what they’re saying, what they’re saying doesn’t get to mean anything, or that they don’t get to have a say?’ Gliff exists in the slide to a dystopia of sorts, though the mechanisms of authoritarianism are at a remove from the narrative and are only glimpsed through their effect on people and society. Smith centers humanity, and focusing on the human hurt and human narrative being ground down by dehumanization only serves to emphasize the cold inhumanity of authoritarianism. With discussions on whistleblowers vanishing and deregulations helping a weed-killer corporation lie about their ingredients, cover up their harm, and continue unimpeded, Smith suggests this is an authoritarian rule where the line between corporations and the State has dissolved. It is what Anne Applebaum terms the titular Autocracy, Inc. where instead of one strongman dictator we have a more corporate authoritarianism: ‘An agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power…[through] sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structure, a complex of security service…and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation.’ It is a system that ‘structures much of their collaboration as for-profit ventures.’ Sort of like that online joke I often think about featuring a tech company eagerly announcing they’ve finally invented “The Torment Nexus” from a sci-fi author’s cautionary novel “Don’t Create the Torment Nexus.” In a present Right from the start, Smith highlights how the social class divide has gotten to an extreme where the rich and powerful no longer even see the poor. ‘It was like they all had their backs to me, even the ones facing me,’ Bri observes, ‘their disconnect was what elegant meant.’ In this dystopia corporations are shoving down our throats, poverty is conflated with an absence of patriotism, to be outside the profit mechanisms of the elite is to be a blight on the nation, and so language comes in to erase these people such as the re-education “ARCs” where those confined are referred to as “animals.” And it is through the examinations of language where Smith really shines. ‘Weeds are just flowers or plants that people have decided to call weeds because people decide they don’t want them there.’ Words and the control of their meaning are central to Gliff and Rose bantering with Bri saying ‘You are bullying me with words longer than the length of my life’ becomes an overall theme about society. A person can suddenly become termed “Unverifiable” and taken to re-education labor camps and in a ‘worded world’ where you are your data you are easily erasable. And what is a name but ‘another word for ownership’ (elbows Ayn Rand in the ribs for her Anthem novel championing “freedom” ending with the man naming the woman). The character arcs are not unlike a lesson in semiotics, one where they must realize a word points to a thing but is not the thing. Rose argues a passport doesn’t prove she’s her, ‘we prove a passport’s it.’ Bri considers how a former pet existed independent of its name: ‘So there was the word that made the name, and there was the dog that it conjured in the mind, and there, way beyond it, totally free of it himself, was the real dog, wagging or not wagging his tail. It was me who was tethered to the word.’ And then there is the issue of naming the horse, the titular Gliff of the novel, and Bri considers ‘was a horse more lost to the world, because of no words, or was the horse more found—or even founded—in the world because of no words?’ There is an excellent moment in the novel when Bri learns the term “polysemous” while discovering Rose has given the horse a name ‘ that can stand in for, or represent, any other word, any word that exists. Or ever existed.’ It is a possible path to freedom. ‘Because of what you called him, he can be everything and anything. And at the same time his name can mean nothing at all. It’s like you’ve both named him and let him be completely meaning-free!’ One can be erased, but there is also a sense that one can escape the confines of State categorization and data sets. Or eluding categorization such as the rather well integrated aspect on Bri existing outside the socially-enforced idea of gender binaries. When asked ‘are you a boy or a girl’ they reply ‘Yes I am’ and are warned that is ‘either very brave of you or very stupid, given recent developments in history.’ Though not existing in defined meaning is a double-edged sword, such as late in the novel when Bri must learn ‘what power can do…the artistry and the discipline it takes to humiliate,’ and face experiences where ‘words first ceased to mean and where, for words, I first ceased to mean too.’ The power of the State, the power of patriarchy, and the power of cruelty knows no humanity. ‘A lot of people are threatened by knowing that people who they think aren’t anything like them exist.’ I swear this novel is hopeful. In life, hope arrives from defying authority, where small but visible acts of defiance show the system is not impenetrable. We see how when you fight for the oppressed, those in power treat you like the oppressed, but in such a society ‘to be innocent in the eyes of the State is to be guilty’ as journalist Chris Hedges said in a recent speech at the Workers Strike Back conference. You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension but you must also stand against them, even in small ways such as Bri discovering that theory is words that can be used against you but praxis, like toppling the eviction machine over and destroying property, signals hope. And that legality and morality are often not congruous as the marketing would have us believe. Smith has always had a fiery undercurrent of resistance and it feels all the more direct and dire here. ‘The person he turned into a mound of nothing but rubble, nothing but smoke and ask, is the opposite of destroyed. His opponent is everywhere. His opponent is everything.’ I have such a deep love for the work of Ali Smith and Gliff is another wonderful work. With a sharp aim at social ills, abuses of power, the hatred and fear that leads to control, oppression and erasure, and that language is often at the center of political manipulation, Smith shows how storytelling can wrestle back control of the narrative and praxis breeds hope. Smith has promised a ‘sister novel’ next year, Glyph, which will ‘tell a story hidden in the first novel,’ though she won’t say much about it as she mentioned in a recent interview: ‘If I do, the unwritten book will run off like a creature in the wild that's seen me see it.’ I can’t wait for the book to emerge from the wild and onto bookshelves. Gliff is a marvelous and nuanced book full of linguistic brilliance, a stern warning for the present, and a desperate hope for the future. 4.5/5 ‘Wait for me, you little revolutionary.’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 11, 2025
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Mar 11, 2025
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Mar 11, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 1632063344
| 9781632063342
| 1632063344
| 3.85
| 10,084
| Sep 2019
| Apr 30, 2024
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really liked it
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‘Reading fiction is important,’ American author Ann Patchett once wrote in the New York Times, ‘it is a vital means of imagining a life other than our
‘Reading fiction is important,’ American author Ann Patchett once wrote in the New York Times, ‘it is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.’ Books capture the human experience and pass on our stories, our emotions, our memories. They chronicle history, they keep the dead in their pages and bring the living in communication with the world. Books connect us and, like James Baldwin once wrote‘it was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.’ Books are a refuge, a companion, an escape, and while reading can ‘take us away from home,’ as Jean Rhys wrote, more importantly reading ‘finds homes for us everywhere.’ This is why libraries are important hubs offering a free space that provides both community and cultural services where anyone regardless of race, religion or class can be. The importance of reading cannot be overstated yet there are many who would silence the voices of authors, restrict the stories we can tell and block our connections to our own history. Kuwaiti author Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library imagines a near future of extreme censorship where words are stripped of content beyond the surface, where imagination and interpretation is criminalized and the government rules all. Believing that books ‘had sinister protocols to take over the world, to colonize and conquer,’ Al-Essa’s book censor is tasked to ‘confront imagination’s monsters,’ scouring novels to detect any banned content, any obscenity, any imagination, queerness, any mention of the Old World or anything that opposes the “official” reality as dictated by the government. But when tasked to censor a new translation of Zorba the Greek, the book censor finds his mind awakened to meaning and metaphor and begins a dangerous transformation into the underworld of readers and contraband books. Shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Translation for its fluid and engaging English rendering by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman, The Book Censor’s Library is a powerful look at censorship and the importance of books for a healthy society that, while it may occasionally feel too similar to its source material, manages a fun balance of serious and whimsical for a thought provoking and timely read. 'You're a typical citizen in Big Brother's republic, stuck in a nation that's slowly killing you, trapped in the whale's belly, its stomach acid eating away at you, with no way to escape.' The near-future in The Book Censor’s Library is a world not unlike George Orwell’s 1984 where the government oppresses the citizens understanding that ‘who controls the past controls the future.’ Al-Essa’s novel does read similarly to 1984, with a bit of absurdist playfulness as if it arrived by way of Fahrenheit 451 and The Little Prince. In fact. both Orwell and Ray Bradbury’s books figure into the novel along with others such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Pinocchio, with the texts lending a lot of thematic aspects to the story as well as key quotes inspiring or haunting the book censor. The idea of “following the white rabbit,” for instance, becomes both a literal event here as well as a symbolic idea of resistance: ‘He imagined the rabbits were leaving behind little tokens of love, doomed souvenirs to remind humankind, forgetful by nature, that their organizations were always susceptible to penetration.’ Its a story that reminded me a lot of the dystopian works we read in high school and would likely work quite well for teen readers. I did feel that at times it hung too close to its inspirations and was overly reliant upon them, though the connections were usually pretty fun. The slogan against imagination here is: HUMAN EXISTENCE IS SUFFERING. Which is, as you likely already guessed, a play on the slogan from Orwell’s 1984, ‘War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength’ But it works for the most part and is building towards a reveal occurring at the end which I suspect will work better for some readers than others. But The Book Censor’s Library can also inspire readers to check out those book. I myself have purchased a copy of Zorba the Greek since starting this one. Which is the novel achieving its goal of spreading literature to others and any book that inspires reading further books is always in win to me.Plus the illustrations from artist Mohammed Al Mohanna add a nice touch. [image] ‘Banning books give us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.’ —Stephen Chbosky The idea for the book, Al-Essa said in an interview for Words Without Borders ‘came to me because I am also a bookseller who has to deal with inspectors and censorship every day.’ Owning her own bookstore in Kuwait has been difficult due to the rampant censorship of publishers and journalists there. Between 2014 and 2018, 4,390 books were banned in Kuwait by the Ministry of Information—a 12 person committee (six Arabic readers and six English readers) not unlike the book censors in Al-Essa’s novel. Al-Essa recently spoke with Lit Hub about the difficulties of censorship and the Ministry’s decisions, such as banning a picture book of Disney’s The Little Mermaid due to the mermaid’s seashell bra being “too promiscuous”: ‘The system was arbitrary and irrational, a bureaucracy with neither head nor tail, like a poem by Baudelaire…Over the past ten years, it has become clear to me how many of our freedoms have been curtailed. What the censor used to approve in the nineties is banned today. The state has rolled back decades of progress while society—with the help of the latest platforms and technology—has gained access to content so vast it’s impossible to censor. It’s our exclusively homegrown version of Alice’s Wonderland, absurd and devoid of logic. The only difference is that it’s far from what any of us would call fun.’ Book censorship is a problem around the world, which does make The Book Censor’s Library a rather important work to translate. Countries such as Hungary and Russia have strict anti-LBBTQ+ censorship laws and the United States has had a rapidly growing issue around book bannings, particularly stories with queer themes or written by Black authors. In the United States PEN America found 10,046 instances of individual books banned, affecting 4,231 unique titles during the 2023-2024 school year. Despite the fact a vast majority of people are opposed to book bans and bans violate the ALA Library Bill of Rights, this number continues to skyrocket over the past few years emboldened by State legislatures and special interest groups. Not to mention that the largest book bans in the US occur in prisons. Bothayna Al-Essa’s warning of censorship is not just a problem of an imaginary dystopia but one we are facing today. [image] Artist Mohammad Sharaf’s cemetery of books banned in Kuwait ‘But what was he supposed to do? Approve a book that was full of bacteria and nourishment, or let the human race die of starvation.’ So how could I not pick up Zorba the Greek—a book that had been banned and unbanned back and forth in Kuwait—after such a loving depiction of it here, the book that had words ‘quivering inside him, like seedlings breaking through dry earth,’ and leading him to question everything. Until then he believes the government’s teachings that ‘language is a smooth surface’ and to never dive into it, wanting to become another cog in a machine ‘like wooden dolls in a puppet theater, their invisible strings controlled by a faceless man.’ We learn that ‘ the System’s aim was to create a human being who, after a long day’s work, wanted nothing else but to go home,’ and all joy is drained from life. The only books he doesn’t ban are those that are hellishly dull to read and, once awakened, he cannot resist the call of banned books. ‘Underneath the thin shell of erring language—guilty of indecency, blasphemy, inciting coups, and more—there was a delicate, strange world he was dying to touch.’ But to be a reader is a to be a criminal here and he risks his own freedom to obtain ‘real books with catastrophic influence, equally able to create and destroy.’ Yet there is also his daughter, ‘the only unpolluted thing in this place,’ whos habit of expressing imagination threatens to find her “reeducated” by the authorities. Yet to have her imagination stifled she grows ill and the censor realizes ‘reality is poisoning her blood.’ What is one to do? It all makes for a rather engaging dystopian society that is rather charmingly constructed to center metaphor, meaning, and reading at the heart of resistance. ‘Because they’re changing the past, and we need to protect our collective memory…We’re trying to save the past to make the future possible.’ Censoring books, as we see in this novel, is not only a way to control the populace but to corrupt the past and leave people without the words they need to understand themselves or each other. With a government control over history books, the book censor realizes ‘nothing existed today that could prove—or disprove—any story about what had happened back then,’ and who can be sure of the truth about the revolution that brought about their authoritative government, a good reminder about the importance of the free press. It also erases the memory of those now gone, especially the figures the government might not want you to know about. ‘If it were destroyed, everyone who’d survived in the story would be gone too. There would be no one left to remember the ones who had died. The balance of the world goes horrible askew when a story is confiscated, it becomes a darker, more ominous place.’ He learns ‘the alternative is resistance, but you’re too busy reading novels,’ and action must go beyond words. Yet words and books are a good start because, as Orwell wrote ‘until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.’ I did rather love the idea of this underground network of rebel booksellers and librarians collecting and distributing banned material and it made working all day in a library and all night in a bookstore seem pretty awesome. Because shoutout to librarians (‘A library was the closest thing humanity had to the idea of the Absolute,’ Al-Essa writes in a rather lovely scene leading into a labyrinth of books that the censor sees as a sort of paradise and reminded me of a quote from Jorge Luis Borges ‘I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library’) and those who fight ‘to keep their collective memory from being bleached away in a world where brains were washed with the strongest of detergents.’ Resist censorship, my friends. ‘All language is a surface, and what lies beneath. on the bottom, is more of a rippled riverbed—made so by the force of a poem, for example...The most ridiculous war you can ever wage is the war of one metaphor against another.' While there were moments where this felt a tad slight or cornball, I rather enjoyed The Book Censor’s Library. I might have enjoyed this more as a teenager but I also really appreciated its focus on the power of reading and the importance of books. A rather quick, engaging, and whimsical work, it reminds us all to protect our freedoms to read if we can and that books are an important tool to cherish. So protect them, lest we have them censored into oblivion. 3.5/5 [image] ‘A thought sprang into his head: every story was a retelling of older ones and a harbinger of tales still to come. It’s been the same story since the beginning of time, and it will live on forever,giving birth to a new version of itself every day. He had never felt so close to understanding the Divine as he did at that moment.’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 06, 2025
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Feb 06, 2025
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Feb 06, 2025
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Paperback
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| 0439023483
| 9780439023481
| 0439023483
| 4.35
| 9,797,902
| Sep 14, 2008
| Oct 14, 2008
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it was amazing
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In around 100 A.D., Roman poet Juvenal wrote that ‘everything now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.’ How t
In around 100 A.D., Roman poet Juvenal wrote that ‘everything now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.’ How true and terrifying these words are to remain relevant through the ages and how succinctly they get to the heart of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Published in 2008, this novel introduced the world to its harrowing heroine, Katniss Everdeen, whom Collin’s has describes as ‘a futuristic Theseus’ volunteering herself to be sent in sacrifice for the entertainment of others in order to protect her sister and taking not only it’s fiction world of Panem by storm but the real world as well. The novel launched into a trilogy and subsequent prequels with the newest slated to arrive next year, has been translated into 56 languages and by the time the first film adaptation arrived in 2012 it had already sold nearly 18 million copies. Yet somehow I have never managed to read the books until now despite rather enjoying the films though after some prodding by my daughter I have finally entered Collins arena and I have to admit…this was incredible. This book practically launched a decade of dystopian novels as popular fiction and helped bring the YA genre to prominence, though I wouldn’t even say this is a teen novel but a novel simply anyone could enjoy across the spectrum of ages. Perfectly plotted for maximum tension and intrigue and quite brilliantly written, this is practically impossible to put down as it brings hit after hit of action, terror and sharp social criticism. A novel of an obdurate authoritarian government and wealthy class upholding power through propaganda, division, lack of resources and public displays of violence, The Hunger Games shows the ripples of unrest begun through the actions of a bold heroine with ‘just the perfect touch of rebellion,’ to break through the public control of Juvenal’s ‘bread and circuses.’ May the odds be ever in her favor. ‘Here's some advice. Stay alive.’ At this point the story to The Hunger Games is practically common knowledge and culturally embedded the way one need not give a description of what, say, Star Wars or Harry Potter is about. Collins perfectly amalgamates narratives explored in stories such as Theseus and the Minotaur or The Most Dangerous Game with early 2000s channel surfing and rise of reality television into a violent, dystopian world. I’ve always said marketing is simply the marketable term for propaganda and The Hunger Games takes this to an extreme level. Their futuristic gladiator-esque battles pitting children from each District of Panem in a brutal contest of survival becomes a sort of reality-television yearly event that keeps the districts in line reminding them of the cost of rebellion while also keeping them at odds with one another, broadcasted as entertainment in such a way as to make one think of Noam Chomsky’s warning that ‘he who controls the media controls the minds of the public.’ The Game’s have a sinister marketing mechanism to them, the ‘circus’ half of Juvenal’s prophetic words. ‘Why am I hopping around like some trained dog trying to please people I hate?’ Plucked from their impoverished conditions and brought to the Capitol and put on display for people to pick favorites and become sponsors for (not unlike politicians begging for donations and trying to get corporations to fund them since in the US a person is capped at around $3k in donations but corporations can give endless money), not for the sake of humanizing them but, more insidiously, to give the impression of humanizing them while actually making them into a character. The sort of character you can become attached to without having to feel any authentic sadness over their death, the type of character you can enjoy from afar without having to confront the reality of their mortality and personhood. ‘It’s all a big show,’ Katniss has to grapple with, ‘its all about how you’re perceived.’ Which hits hard in the age of algorithms and brands pretending to be people on social media, but in the Games it means if the children aren’t murdering each other sensationally enough they’ll send a fireball at Katniss so the slogan “the girl who was on fire” gets a little more traction to sell sponsorships. Little did they realize that very slogan could take on a double meaning of resistance… ‘Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.’ Perhaps this is from having seen the whole arc before reading the book but this read was a fascinating exercise in well-plotted foreshadowing with Katniss as a fairly unreliable narrator that has yet to become aware that her character building has been subverted as one of rebellion. Madge, the mayor’s daughter, giving her the Mockingjay pin is just the start of her transformation into a symbol and the slow-burn of scripted romance and showmanship is all aimed at showing ‘I'm more than just a piece in their Games.’ As my daughter pointed out, Panem is a total surveillance State and the randomness of the Games lottery—something that feels vaguely akin to Shirley Jackson's The Lottery (read in link)—is likely more marketing than actuality the way reality TV vet’s their contestants and the Capitol is far too horny for control to not hand-pick contestants for maximum profitablility under the fake guise of chance. The District 12 handlers have also had time to devise a quiet plan and use the flow of entertainment as a way to enact it as long as it is keeping ratings high and the public glued to there television. This, like all marketing (I have a degree in this almost entirely for the purpose of shit talking it), is best done by appealing to emotions (fear and religion, the latter of which is absent in Panem, being the two with strongest resonance) and employing psychological manipulation to make viewers/customers/etc feel they are making their own choices instead of being corralled, and by creating the character of Katniss they are playing into the marketing needs of the Capitol and the entertainment factors of The Games while also planting their own seeds of subversion in the highly fertile soils of public option. Here is where Juvenal’s ‘bread’ comes in. ‘District 12. Where you can starve to death in safety.’ Collins pays special attention to food throughout the novel with bread having a very symbolic purpose. [Big Dad Joke Voice] more like the HANGRY Games, am I right!? **elbows you in the ribs until you are assured therapy is in your future** Katniss’ own name and her father’s quip that ‘As long as you can find yourself, you'll never starve,’ is key here too, as she becomes the symbol that gives hope in districts that are quite literally being starved while we see the juxtaposition of the Capitol’s wealth mainly portrayed through their absurd and frivolous fashion and lavish meals. Compared to the Districts, ‘they have no cause to rebel,’ when being fed and entertained is part and parcel of their access to wealth while being constantly reminded that those outside the Capitol are famished and those who betray them become an Avox with their tongues cut out serving out in the public eye so all can see and internalize the punishment. The public shows of violence are part of the way the Capitol keeps the masses down, coupled with their refusal to let the Districts communicate, dividing them and only allowing them to interact as rivals during The Games. As Juvenal said, control oomes from the circus—not unlike the way Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was a world that, under the systematic drugging and entertaining by the State, controlled itself in order to avoid pain—but also bread and keeping a population starving in order to feed them as a reward is a fast way to ensure they line up and keep their heads down in order to receive the “good graces” of the State and look out for themselves to avoid punishment only further dividing them. Make life a “every person for themselves” situation and punish anyone in proximity to any crime and people will not unite. It is a union busting tactic and a reminder that family is on the line if you step out of line. When Katniss shoots an arrow at the onlookers out of frustration she is less scared for herself than what they might do to her family as punishment. ‘Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you.’ This isn’t just in dystopia either and there are a lot of real world examples in the US of this sort of thing. Look at the 1913 Italian Hall Disaster in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula, my own state, where management shouted “fire” in a hall being used for an employee christmas party to trigger a panicked stampede to punish workers for collective action—59 of the 73 people killed were children, the youngest being 2 years old—to send a message that uniting against the powers that be meant death of your family. Or, even more insidious, simple glossing over violence by distracting with gestures that seem positive but cede no power. Llook at how the creation of Labor Day was a way to put a good government marketing spin on lip service to the working class without any actual action in response to police opening fire and murdering strikers during the Pullman railroad strike in 1894. Such tactics is exactly what the Capitol does, commit violence and then spin it to hold power. This becomes rather pertinent during the Games when we see how the strong form collective action in order to mop up the weak. It’s like corporations, rallying together and funding politicians to ensure tax reform and policy that benefits them and only betraying each other “in the spirit of competition” once they are the last ones standing. Yet here we see a subversion. Peeta joins with The Careers in order to protect Katniss (trust issues are on high throughout this book) and there are some amazing moments when District 11 realizes they are far more aligned with 12 than the Careers. Its like the sayings on class solidarity people like to posture but rarely enact about how the middle class is far more aligned with the homeless and poor than billionaires but, as the Capitol propagates, all attention is turned towards serving the rich in hopes of being able to survive. I need to give a quick shoutout to District 11 though because they are wholly underrated in the series. Thresh is a real one and my favorite character and Rue is such a little sweetheart who deserved better and Katniss’ realization of this is quite a spark on the fires of rebellion. And how does District 11 thank her? Bread. ‘What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?’ Let’s talk about bread. Bread comes bearing a long history of symbolism. Breaking bread has a connotation of togetherness and unity. We have Jesus in the Bible making five loaves feed the masses, or breaking bread with his apostles as a symbol of unity. And this unity is present here too. Peeta, the sweet little Peeta who is FAR more interesting than the meek version of him in the films, brings Katniss bread when she, like Theseus, volunteers ‘as tribute’ to fight in the Games. It is an early symbol of unity replicated by the gift from District 11 after she places flowers on the body of Rue to humanize her death and show that even the deaths of the poor carry emotional weight. It is also a direct fuck you to the showy fashions of the Capitol to adorn the body of the poor with bright colors–bright flowers that will wither and die like the Districts are under their control. Unity becomes key here, and Katniss and Peeta’s collective action to eat the berries becomes the action that allows them to live. It will also become the action that President Snow fears is a spark of rebellion in Catching Fire but I’ve not finished it yet so more on that later. They lived by giving a marketable narrative the Capitol couldn’t spin fast enough. It is interesting to note, however, that the act of rebellion once again involves food and eating. Katniss earlier shoots an arrow through an apple, the apple in the mouth of a pig that fairly represents the way the children being sacrificed for the entertainment of the State, to ensure the Capitol pays attention to her. Even Haymitch’s alcoholism (beer being a product of yeast that nudges the symbol of bread yet again) is a show of indulgence in a world where indulgence is denied to the Districts, can be viewed as a small private rebellion. It also keeps the horrors of his past quieted, not that this condones alcoholism as a coping mechanism but you can see where Collins is going with that. Especially with lines like ‘They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!’ and how we can hold on to our own small personal resistance. ‘I want to do something, right here, right now, to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can't own.’ The Hunger Games was an utterly fantastic book and engaging read far beyond what I had imagined it would be. It is fiery, it is relevant, it is smart, it is a whole lot of fun without sacrificing depth and insight. I liked it a lot better than the movies too, which tend to focus more of the action whereas the book kind of reminded me of the Gary Paulsen books I read as a kid where it focuses more on the survival aspects. It is a smart little book on the perils and powers of propaganda, the bread and circuses that keep people in line, but also a story about pushing back using their own tactics against them. A fascinating and fantastic book that lives up to the hype. 5/5 'And may the odds be ever in your favor.' ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 17, 2024
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Jul 18, 2024
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Jul 17, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1546171460
| 9781546171461
| 1546171460
| 4.51
| 962,635
| Mar 18, 2025
| Mar 18, 2025
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really liked it
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More like Sunrise on the WEEPING am I right!? A prequel of pain and punishment in Panem, Sunrise on the Reaping brings the blood, brutality, and betra More like Sunrise on the WEEPING am I right!? A prequel of pain and punishment in Panem, Sunrise on the Reaping brings the blood, brutality, and betrayal of the Capitol’s games back for another thrilling and utterly chilling edition of Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games series. Haymitch has always been my favorite and so I had high hopes for this installment. Dear Suzanne Collins, you delivered and more. Collin’s series signature critiques of propaganda, oppression and rule by fear and force come screaming through this novel where winning isn’t surviving. it’s just a different way to die.’ Set about 40 years after the events of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes yet with 24 years still to come before Katniss first steps into the arena in The Hunger Games, Sunrise unveils the tale of Haymitch Abernathy as he is plunged into a fight for his life in the 50th Hunger Games. The return of familiar characters from a new vantage point—Haymitch is 16 and ‘not a drinker’ at the outset of this novel—allows even stories we thought we knew a chance to reveal that Katniss and the reader’s knowledge of the past was largely filtered through government propaganda and the truth is much more horrifying. There is certainly a lot more reaping than sowing here, and though this novel seems rather hit or miss with fans I found this to be a page-turner of dark excitement and dystopian social criticism that draws us into an unsettling feeling of complicity in the violent voyeurism of The Games that, for all the brutal bleakness, manages to center the fragile humanity and will to endure in a way that keep the story from collapsing under the weight of burdens already well-trod in the series. A fast-paced and fun return to the gruesomeness of Collin’s dystopian vision, this is an excellent new chapter where moments will make you feel as if your ‘ heart breaks into fragments so small it can never be repaired,’ and Collin’s shows she still has the power to move audiences in new and surprising ways. Because you will never think of squirrels the same again. Sorry. ‘I’m entirely the Capitol’s plaything. They will use me for their entertainment and then kill me, and the truth will have no say in it.’ You know that quote from G.K. Chesterton how ‘Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist,’ but rather they ‘tell children the dragons can be killed’? Replace fairy tale with dystopian fiction and dragons with government and you get to what Collin’s is doing here. A key to good dystopian fiction is showing a behemoth of terrible might and power, but then showing how there is a weak point where the average person can topple it all. If they have luck and good friends on their side I suppose. While the original series felt like a warning against being moths to the flame of marketing media that upholds social inequalities prostrates us before the powerful, Sunrise arrives at a time where we’re already drowning in the muck and the mire. Yet Collin’s doesn’t wallow, in fact she seems to be slapping us with pages saying “STOP THIS, pay attention!” (which includes all the thirst traps of prequel Snow, stop it, sure he’s so hot but he’s an evil genocidal maniac so nah) and while the novel peers into the gloomiest, most gruesome corners of Panem to highlight the horrors within, there is a spark of revolutionary spirit just itching to catch light. Collin's has always had an excellent philosophical undercurrent to her tales and Sunrise upholds this intellectual weight. She even opens with a quote from David Hume that aptly sets the stage: 'Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.' Collin's gives a sharp look at the power of propaganda to reduce the masses to cattle in the eyes of the State, to give them entertainment to keep them occupied and to keep the oppressed down with marketing that claims they deserve their poverty. It is in keeping with what Roman poet Juvenal wrote around 100A.D. that 'everything now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.' And now we have kids killing each other in hopes they can put food on the table but are really just lambs for the slaughter. In an interview, Collin's discussed how the version of Haymitch we meet in the start of the original novel was 'misleading' and this book offers a better view of him and why he is. The key to her novel, she mentions, is Hume's concept of implicit submission which he defines as why people 'resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers' and how we can see a reflection of our current society in the world of Panem. As to the question why the many submit to the few in Panem, Collin's says Hume already answers this: 'We're allowing ourselves to be controlled by "opinion." And that's where propaganda comes in. All right, then. "What propaganda de we all consume on a daily basis that maintains this status quo? Is it harder to maintain in an autocracy or a democracy where we pride ourselves on our intellectual or political freedom? How much propaganda does it take to make you think that implicit submission is what you want? Is it inevitable? Is there a way to protect ourselves from it?' Collins also adds that the novel is also about 'the uncertainty of inductive reasoning, propaganda, love.' Because of the ways propaganda and misinformation worm through the narrative, Haymitch was the most logical choice to be the narrator and so begins our dark journey to the past and back to another of the bloody arenas for the Games. 'He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.' —Noam Chomsky The way Collins sets this up with astute parallels to the original trilogy is fantastic and while it is likely the darkest and saddest of the novels, it might well be the most rebellious. To know where things will end up by the era of Katniss only enhances the tension and terror here as we realize little Haymitch’s reward for not dying in childhood is an adulthood of depression and alcoholism leading to activism (can relate, buddy!). But while filling in these gaps in time Collins also emphasizes the gaps between the rich and the poor, the glitz and glamour of the Capitol overflowing with wealth where women can get literal cat ears modified onto their head with the harshness of the districts like 12 where Haymitch is bootlegging so his family can live off the meager pay. The impoverished contestants are less people and objects of disposable entertainment for those in the Capitol who objectify, sexualize, gamble on and bat nary an eye when they die. Things are not peachy in Panem poverty and all roads seem a rocky burden with no goal in sight. ‘And that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.’ The story begins as the 50th Hunger Games is adding a new twist–double contestants for twice the terrible entertainment. This is the fateful games that ensnared Haymitch to toil as mentor for the rest of his life and with double the contestants Collins manages to pack in double the violence and trauma. We have a father made to mentor his own son knowing damn well he’s not gonna make it and Haymitch isn’t even reaped but a sudden death gets him tossed in anyways. Oh also the reaping is Haymitch’s birthday. Happy birthday, kid! ‘Nobody feels like having cake after watching two kids being hauled off to the Capital for slaughter.” Dead kids and deadly squirrels sure make for a fucked up read and while the novel often nudges towards torture porn (this one is BRUTAL, friends), that is actually a large part of the point–the Capitol’s annual funfest is just straight up torture porn maketed as a patriotic display of power. Snow, disease-ridden and fully leaning into his evil impulses, is an obdurate tyrant at this point dispensing cruelties for the sake of cruelty and hoarding enough power that nobody will dare lift a finger to stop him regardless of how monstrous his actions are. And his henchmen will always ensure ‘snow lands on top’ or it’s their heads. The erosion of checks and balances, the inability for the people to keep their leaders in check, leads to terror. Like, oh hey here’s a copy of the dead girl, you’re welcome! *shudders* ‘You don’t win the Hunger Games by playing fair. You win by knowing the rules better than they do.’ We always knew the games were bleak and fucked up. But whew does Collin’s really pull back the covers to reveal just how intensely fucked up we are talking about. Like real bad. No spoilers but if you thought everything was chance well…ask Plutarch about that because apparently he’s been here the whole time and Collins leads into some rebellion stuff that makes you realize it was far more orchestrated behind the scenes of playing dumb that occurs in the original novel. Haymitch in particular where being a drunk idiot nobody expects anything from is a great mask if you need to weasel your way in to light the fuse of revolution. It’s really great to see more fleshed out versions of side characters, though some great characters might just be absent…‘In fifty years, we’ve only had one victor, and that was a long time ago. A girl who no one seems to know anything about.’ But hey, at least the love interest in this one is also musically inclined. But whew love doesn’t seem to get much of a good break in this world. ‘They will not use my tears for their entertainment.’ It’s another year of the Hunger Games and as usual people are like “hey so this shit sucks and maybe we should stop it?” but really nobody ever does because trying has pretty unfathomably terrible consequences. And not just for you but your loved ones too. ‘Don't let them paint their posters with your blood. Not if you can help it,’ is good advice, but also a reminder that dying brutally with dignity is the only victory really, that the dying brutally part is just…it’s going to happen to you. Brace yourself, this book gets rough but is also surprising because what you thought you knew about Haymitch’s life was all under the wraps of government propaganda… ‘The Games must end. Here. Now. Every death reinforces the importance of the arena plot succeeding.’ Propaganda takes center stage in the social criticisms on the novel and Collin’s pulls in a lot of poetry quotes from the likes of William Blake and Edgar Allan Poe among others enhance the atmosphere but also remind us how much a pretty pairing of words can affect people. Of course George Orwell is always on mind with a quote at the ready for any good dystopian fiction too: ‘All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don’t think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why.’ And don’t forget William Blake’s ‘A truth that’s told with bad intent, / Beats all the lies you can invent.’ We see how propaganda dupes a populace, how it coaxes submission, how it rubs out the feelings of empathy and humanity if we can cast the poor fighters as glamorous contestants of entertainment, but also how it can mask atrocities and secure power. The role of propaganda to grease the gears of authoritarianism is on full display in Sunrise, but so is the role of the revolutionary who must rise against it. The cost, however, will be great. ‘I love you like all-fire.’ Returning to the world of The Hunger Games was a real treat full of trauma but wow did I enjoy Sunrise on the Reaping. This one is harsh. This hits hard and had me feeling all the feelings with BIG SAD being a primary one of those feelings. A well crafted tale that earns its telling by making the long list of familiar names not merely fan service but an opportunity to reveal new truths, deepen the history, and expose the lies of the Capitol to see that it is somehow still even more sinister than we could have realized. This was a fun read and one that was impossible to put down and if Suzanne Collins writes anything Hunger Games, you best believe I’ll be there with bells on. 4./5 ‘The snow may fall, but the sun also rises.’ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 18, 2025
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Apr 2025
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Jun 07, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0063116219
| 9780063116214
| 0063116219
| 3.89
| 2,820
| Jun 13, 2023
| Jun 13, 2023
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liked it
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Maya finds herself alone and outcast in a world where a procedure has arrived to remove people’s hearts with the intent of erasing all the sadness and
Maya finds herself alone and outcast in a world where a procedure has arrived to remove people’s hearts with the intent of erasing all the sadness and anger in the world and build a more productive society. The Faint of Heart, a gorgeous YA graphic novel from writer and artist Kerilynn Wilson, makes us confront the bleakness of a utilitarian world devoid of emotion where art, fun, friendship and love are no longer valued and considered foolish. While I have to confess that the story requires some major leaps of faith, it does function as a really powerful metaphor and the art is astonishingly beautiful. This is worth it for the art alone, I mean, take a look at Wilson’s work: [image] [image] This is one you just sort of have to go with it and not question how removing the physical human heart works to begin with and why that would erase all feelings, but whatever, its cool. While the art gorgeously depicts this dystopian world I feel it would have benefited from a bit more world building (something I almost never say) even if only to let the story breathe a bit. This can be read in about 20 minutes and everything moves a bit too quickly after the initial set-up to really sink in, but it is altogether rather lovely. What we do know is this: ‘The Scientist discovered that all sadness, anxiety, and anger would disappear when the heart was removed and placed in a numbing solution. And now the scientist has vanished, Maya is outcast and considered foolish for not removing her heart, her sister who is also her best friend and art partner has completely written her off, and there are rumors of a heart thief breaking into the storage facility. Is that why some people are beginning to act strange and seem a bit sad instead of blank? [image] I love the emphasis on artistic expression in this story and the message that even if art or any hobby you enjoy isn’t necessarily productive or profitable, the joy it gives you has an incredible value all to itself. In keeping with this message, the joy of Wilson’s art is certainly worth celebrating and I love the small use of colors that really pop in the muted, grey world of heartless folks. I also loved the quick friendship that springs up between Maya and Max and how they collaborate to try and find a way to make people feel again. [image] A quick read that perhaps didn’t necessarily work all too for me, The Faint of Heart is still a beautiful and empowering message told through equally beautiful art. So celebrate what makes you happy, take the good with the bad, celebrate your friends and what makes us each unique, and definitely give The Faint of Heart a read! 3.5/5 [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 31, 2023
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Oct 31, 2023
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Oct 31, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0358359929
| 9780358359920
| 0358359929
| 4.23
| 7,892
| Nov 04, 2020
| Sep 14, 2021
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really liked it
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I often think that art is the closest thing we have to magic. Just words or images on a page can transport us to imaginative worlds, instill strong em
I often think that art is the closest thing we have to magic. Just words or images on a page can transport us to imaginative worlds, instill strong emotions that overcome us and make us laugh, cry, love and dream. While I tend to find graphic adaptations of “classic” novels to be rather hit or miss, Fido Nesti’s 1984 is a real success that brings Orwell’s beloved and eerie novel to life and truly immerses us in the frightening dystopia. This is an artistic journey that stays faithful to the story and delivers uneasy imagery that adds to the story instead of seems just an excuse to have a graphic novel as I sometimes feel these adaptations tend to go. This would be great for hesitant readers who still want to experience Orwell’s work but fans of the original novel (I won’t get into the plot much but I have reviewed it at length here) will find this a rewarding visual plunge into the darkness of the tale. [image] Fido Nesti has a really engaging style that is rather cartoonish in a way that doesn’t soften the blow but rather makes it almost more distressing through the grotesque caricatures. Much of the story is done in grey-scale that captures the grimness of the society with light uses of reds and yellows. It gives a very “cold war” vibe while also feeling futuristic and very very dystopian. I particularly liked the use of frames, having many small frames with tight angles on Winston to help express the small, fleeting and dangerous spaces the idea of individuality can occupy. Juxtapose this with the large panels of crowds, particularly the Two Minute Hate or other moments that show the masses as threatening. [image] This is a very eerie and unsettling rendition and for that I quite enjoyed it. There are long passages from the novel threated through the book, which was a bit jarring but does show much visual and visceral the actual text is without the need of images (though, then it almost seems to ask what is the point of a visual adaptation?) which is cool I guess. Though I had just read the book so it felt unnecessary to me. Still, Nesti manages to dazzle and really bring this story to life in a lovely hardbound edition that is quite large and lovely to hold. Worth the trip, but be careful because Big Brother is watching… [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Jul 19, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1250855462
| 9781250855466
| 1250855462
| 3.42
| 7,040
| Feb 21, 2023
| Feb 21, 2023
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it was ok
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A dystopian society of forced birth and supposed regeneration of souls on a dying, radiated planet is beginning to fracture towards rebellion becomes
A dystopian society of forced birth and supposed regeneration of souls on a dying, radiated planet is beginning to fracture towards rebellion becomes the setting for a retelling of Sophocles’s Antigone in Veronica Roth’s Arch-Conspirator. Plucking the characters from the Greek story and launching them into a future fraught with political upheaval, the story very closely follows what you would expect with Antigone facing punishment for giving funeral rights to her deceased brother, Polyneikes, after he dies slaying his other brother in an attempt on the iron-fisted rule of their uncle, Kreon. There is a lot going on here, particularly in world building which is rather expansive and effective given the short length of the novella, and while it may often feel like there is just one element too many to properly balance in the framework of a Greek myth retelling, I applaud Roth for a solid effort and attempt. The story rotates between the perspectives of many of the characters, giving a variety of viewpoints and conflicting opinions that helps construct a really dynamic portrait of the events, though it does feel overly stuffed at times. Though while it was occasionally cumbersome, at least Arch-Conspirator is a bold and daring attempt that hits some fantastic moments of political struggles between characters as Antigone’s actions become a catalyst for a possible revolution in dystopian Thebes. ‘Seven houses crumbling on a Theban street. One’s got no fire, one’s got no heat. One’s got no water; one’s got no meat.’ The primary issue with Arch-Conspirator is that, while having inventive fun with the original tale, it seems like it is trying to do too much at once instead of exploring one theme really well. I love a retelling that really throws you for a loop, but I feel a total resetting of time and place to use the narrative as a modern political commentary was done much more effectively in Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which dealt with immigration and the Iraq war. I quite liked that we get to see conflicting opinions and perspectives that self-justify actions, though in Home Fire we spend much more time in these perspectives that allow them to be nuanced instead of such broad strokes as we have here. The world building is excellent but also trying too many things at once. We have a fascinating and terrifying birthing system, with women forced to give birth through State fertility programs that selects the DNA of deceased citizens (there is a library of the dead, basically) and, through gene editing, creates a new life. In this way the people are told souls are reincarnated—Antigone finds this dubious though it is her brothers final wishes to have his soul collected, something Kreon denies him due to his “traitorous” demise—and pregnancies conceived through intercourse without gene editing are considered unnatural and create humans that lack souls. The now deceased Oedipus and Jocasta had their children this way, and so Antigone and her family are not only marked by their parents radical past but considered soulless vessels (Oedipus was a radical who believed ‘Immortality…should be for everyone’ and made the soul collection available to all). There is also the underexplored aspect that the planet is supposedly inhospitable to life now and the radiation is slowly hurting everyone, though a brief mention from Antigone gives the impression this might be partially orchestrated to keep everyone in the city under Kreon’s control. ‘What do you think would happen if I allowed a crack in my wall?’ While not enough, the perspective from Kreon really works. We see a man who, while doing horrible things, sees himself as making hard decisions that are ultimately good. It is a great reminder that most of the worst evils in the world are done by people convinced it is the right thing to do. How can humans survive without tough control, he feels, and see’s Antigone’s actions as a threat against his rule that could incite public opinion against him. Though, as his son Haemon comments, ‘You don’t want to allow a crack in your wall—but the crack is already there, and I fear this will widen it.’ I enjoyed these conversations the best, especially when the characters are arguing as it shows the situation is much more nuanced than it seems. ‘One man, High Commander or no, doesn’t have the right or the power to declare cruelty to be morality just because something has affected him personally. There is a word for the man who tries…tyrant.’ While the revolution brewing is a big driving part of the plot, it feels very under examined and could have easily been expanded for a full length novel. Rare for me to say as I love a short book, but this just needed room for all the elements to breathe more and be explored deeper. It just feels thrown together otherwise with quick mentions on how they interact and inform other decisions instead of truly seeing how each element bleeds into the others. Especially with Antigone’s story having such far reaching consequences. ‘For some reason, you talk to people about food shortages, power outages, contaminated water, the government disappearing people—you might as well be speaking another language. But if you tell them their High Commander wants to send a pretty young thing into space to waste away? Suddenly they’re listening.’ I love what she is doing, and for the most part I think she is doing it well and doing something really cool with the story, it just never quite came together well enough to fully land. And while I’m certainly of the mind that you can do whatever you want in retellings, I found the ending to be rather lackluster compared to how dramatic and abrupt the story of Antigone usually ends. Once again, I can’t help but compare it to Home Fire which I think really nailed a retelling ending. “And if the election turns out something worse?” Parth leaned forward. “Then at least we would be responsible for our own doom.” Despite some criticisms, Arch-Conspirator is a cool story and a really fun retelling, I only wish I felt it was all able to be more effectively juggled. Which isn’t really Roth’s fault as it would require an absolute master of literature to pull all this off in such a short space while also feeling polished and powerful. It just feels like biting off more than one can chew, though it still isn’t bad. Antigone is a great story and it was fun to see this done in a sci-fi setting. 2.5/5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 28, 2023
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Jun 28, 2023
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Jun 28, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0063055252
| 9780063055254
| 0063055252
| 3.68
| 2,747
| Apr 19, 2022
| Apr 19, 2022
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really liked it
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There’s something about Ford Fordham’s that really works in this graphic adaptation of Huxley’s Brave New World. These beautiful, brightly colored wat
There’s something about Ford Fordham’s that really works in this graphic adaptation of Huxley’s Brave New World. These beautiful, brightly colored watercolor panels have a cheerfulness that feels incongruous with the darkness of themes and the dystopian gut-punches that exist in this world and the disconnect adds an uneasiness to the experience. It is a wonderful choice, with the nearly surrealist color choices like a bright, cheery version of the film Blade Runner that shows how the dread and oppression is masked under a veneer of false happiness—not unlike the theme of everyone drugged up to be comfortably numbed to thinking too much or questioning the world around you. Fordham does an excellent job of bringing Huxley’s work to life, adhering fairly well to the story enough that nothing really stood out as odd to someone like myself who hasn’t read the source material in over a decade now, which is to be expected as Fordham has previously done great work with his graphic adaptations in To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel and The Great Gatsby: The Graphic Novel. [image] Fans of the original novel will likely enjoy this as it is a fun, visual way to revisit it. One of the downfalls of an adaptation like this, however, is that much of the impressions of society and explanations of the dystopia are more nuanced and delivered better through text than just visuals. While I found Huxley to be a bit irritating and always seems to be a bit heavy handed to make sure his points aren’t missed, at least his exposition does give a more well-rounded idea of the society. My rating here is on the adaptation alone, for the record, not on the material itself which I’ve never been all that big on to be honest. I mean, it’s cool but just not my favorite. I do enjoy Huxley’s criticisms of the whole factory birthing and how horrific the genetic engineering is to create low-IQ individuals to happily do basic jobs without questioning authority or desiring better for themselves. The book isn’t exactly sex-positive and does spend a lot of the criticisms on people having casual sex directing it at the women characters and using some gender slurs, which isn’t great and not my favorite way to make a point. Theres way more to that and it is an insightful and interesting investigation into social conditioning and control. And Fordham brings this all to life, we get to witness some drug fueled sex orgies, everyone getting off from John doing some religion-inspired self-flagellation, and the darkness of society seeping through the cracks in the manufactured joy. This was a fun way to revisit the classic novel and the art is wonderful. Would recommend. ...more |
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| 4,421
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liked it
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A violent, class-based dystopia set after a cataclysmic climate event is certainly something that resonates with our modern day fears and S [image] A violent, class-based dystopia set after a cataclysmic climate event is certainly something that resonates with our modern day fears and Snowpiercer, the graphic novel by Jacques Lob and illustrated by Jean-Marc Rochette, examines these fears in a thrilling and hard-hitting way. Most will be already familiar with the story, as it has been adapted to film by Bong Joon-ho, which covers the events of this first volume of the graphic series, as well as a recent mini-series. There are some great ideas contained here and the political struggles and messages are quite well done, though the book itself fumbles in its execution being a bit clunky and not giving enough room for it’s story to breathe. That said, and despite a few other issues, it is still thought provoking and worth a quick read, as it is certainly one you can rip through in a single sitting. The premise is fairly simple yet fun: after “the great white”—a planet-killing climate event that has covered the world in ice and likely was set off intentionally due to a war—the last remnants of humanity are traversing the globe on a massive train with 1001 cars. The rich enjoy the front of the train with their wealth and comforts, while the 3rd class passengers are oppressed in the rear of the train. The book follows Proloff, who after being caught attempting to flee the horrors of the back of the train, is being escorted to the front to be questioned by the President. Accompanying him aside from the armed military is Belleau, a woman from 2nd Class who is a leader of an activist group that advocates for the 3rd class passengers. Much of the story involves them traveling to the front, with the brief glimpses of the different cars doing some heavy-lifting world building. They witness mechanics who are religious fanatics that worship the train (Saint Loco), rumors of it slowing down, the vast hunk of meat that replaces itself they call ‘mama’ which feeds everyone on board, and witness the class dynamics as they move forward. While much is left implied and you get a sense the world is much bigger than what you see, this section felt rushed and painting in broad strokes the impressions of the various communities. What we do see, however, is that in a train that is designed to be fully self-sustaining and provide any passenger needs (it was a vacation train for the super wealthy before the collapse), it is now maintained through massive inequality. Though even the front doesn’t seem terribly great beyond simply not being oppressed like those behind them. They seem to do nothing but drink, drugs, and have sex, ‘it’s the best thing they’ve found to fight the fear and boredom.’ What works best here is the class-based fears and the ways those who wish to help the poor are demonized as much as those they wish to help. There is also the paranoia that attempts to help the poor are merely a disguise to eradicate them as it becomes clear that those at the front violently value their material needs at the cost of their humanity. There is also an epidemic that might be spreading through the train, which is also being weaponized against the 3rd class passengers. Which definitely hits differently in 2022 than it probably did in 2000 when this first appeared in French. The plotline about turning the 2nd class against the 3rd class instead of their shared oppressors, the elites in 1st class, is pretty well done though underexplored. [image] So much of the bones here are great, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The frames are clunky and often tricky to follow and the segues are often too jumpy. It can be unclear what is happening and who is who at times, though I do like the rather grim artwork done in stark black and white. While the class-based revolutionary plot is cool, it also feels a bit overly simplistic. The train is almost exclusively white people and the handling of women in the novel is…not great. Women exist almost entirely for sexual purposes in the novel. It is observed that men from 1st class abduct and rape women from 2nd class all the time, though nobody seems to care or think it’s all that bad. And even Belleau is pretty flat as a character, wanting to sleep with Proloff within frames of meeting him and her activism is approached as seeming not that deep and her really only existing in the story as a prop for his development. It’s a fairly fun story, but the action-thriller pace (without actually much action) seems to push too fast and nothing really develops, breathes or has enough attention to really hook into the reader. Major deaths are brushed aside in a single frame, for instance. I also might be coming to this having seen the film years ago and basing my impressions using that as the model, so take everything I’ve written here with a grain of salt and read other reviews too. It is short, and I would encourage you to read it if you are interested. 3.5/5 ...more |
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it was amazing
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‘The world is full of painful stories.’ When the world falls apart and people are beset by intense suffering and sadness, many turn to religion for the ‘The world is full of painful stories.’ When the world falls apart and people are beset by intense suffering and sadness, many turn to religion for the assuring promise of a better place beyond death. In Parable of the Sower, an intensely riveting and disquieting vision of America’s collapse by Octavia Butler, teenage Lauren Olamina instead asks why should we resign ourselves to hope in paradise after death when we could rise up with the power to fight the suffering we face while alive to embrace a brighter tomorrow for all. Lauren lives in a community protected by a wall from the violence outside and is afflicted with a condition of hyper-empathy. Her perspective on other’s pain shapes her towards a revolutionary new beginning for humanity, if she can survive that is. Drawing from the biblical parable from which the novel takes it’s name, this is a novel about the seeds of hope that we must believe can grow even in the darkest of nights and the harshest terrains. Butler plunges the reader into a bleakness of humanity where capitalism has reformed a fresh take on slavery and worker’s oppression as the economy gasps is dying breaths, while all around chaos reigns supreme. Harrowing yet hopeful, Butler’s novel rightfully belongs in conversation with 1984 and Brave New World as a prescient portrayal of social collapse while offering a way forward through embracing change and empathy. ‘Freedom is dangerous but it's precious, too. You can't just throw it away or let it slip away.’ Butler pulls no punches in her world building. Beginning in 2024, Lauren has been born into an America ravaged by climate change, violence and a collapsing economy that opened the door for outlandish inequality. A new President takes the helm on a platform to remove government programs and revitalize jobs, creating a fresh revitalization of Company Towns and debt-slavery. The set-up between a willful acceptance of a debt one can never pay off or succumbing to the violence that is spreading offers little chance of hope in lives already resigned to nothing more than a short lifespan having babies and suffering. Published in 1993, the parallels to our modern sociopolitical climate are striking, such as the pits of debt or fear of losing health care that keep people locked in less-than-desirable jobs (the 2018 comedy Sorry to Bother You from Boots Riley does an excellent job comedically skewering this concept as well--highly recommended). Butler bares her teeth in her critiques of capitalism and the slow creep on human rights that perish for the sake of “economic progress” that only seems to benefit the established elite. ‘There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.’ When it becomes necessary for human life to be normalized as expendable, is the system even worth upholding? ‘Will it be legal to poison, mutilate, or infect people—as long as you provide them with food, water, and space to die?’ Lauren wonders as those around her flee to the illusion of safety in the newly created company town. As she will say in the sequel, Parable of the Talents, ‘In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.’ . Like a phoenix, Lauren wishes for a new future to rise from the ashes of her dying society--which she quite literally witnesses being burnt by roaming gangs who then murder all her friends and family as they try to flee. The God of her forebearers has failed to provide meaning for her anymore and those who follow the old ways seem more of an obstacle to a chance of progress than a safety net. Butler demonstrates how many of our problems are blatant and in our face, but we have been socialized to accept them and those who speak out and warn others or offer an alternative, like Lauren, are dismissed as fearmongering and alarmism. This is a story about what happens when your warnings are correct, but the devastation gives no room for validation. Remember the parts of The Road that haunt you? Now imagine that sustained for a full novel. The second half of this book follows people walking a freeway under constant siege of theft and murder, long nights keeping watch and all the nightmares along the way. ‘That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.’ Butler evokes the spirit of Frederick Douglass in Lauren, who, like Douglass, had the rare ability to read and write in her oppressed community. As her small group of refugees trudge north, she considers how they have become a sort of ‘modern underground railroad,’ taking in those fleeing prostitution or debt-slavery, those fleeing a wasteland where everything they love was stolen from them. Douglass surreptitiously taught slaves how to read and write using the Bible as the primary text. Lauren, who is teaching her friends, is also spreading religion. But unlike when the oppressed embraced the God of their oppressors--an act of defiance and spiritual salvation--here they are rejecting the God of old in place of a new one: Earthseed. Like the farmer from the biblical parable from which the novel takes it’s name, Lauren is spreading the seeds of her new ‘belief system’. God is Change, Lauren says. Her God is less a deity than an idea that she believes can transform humanity. Writing her scripture in poetry, she is walking the land preaching her new beliefs and taking in converts. Like the seeds of the parable her words may fall on deaf or disbelieving ears, but some, like Travis or Bankole, become her ‘first converts’. All that you touch, Earthseed draws on many religions--Lauren’s father is a Baptist pastor, which shapes her foundational thinking--mixed with afrofuturism. The ultimate goal is to spread humanity in peace throughout the stars, which is a defiant statement in a country where the newly elected President is working to abolish the space program. For Lauren, God is a trickster figure, an embodiment of change, which to many of her hopeful converts doesn’t seem enough of a powerful cause to believe in. This makes one consider why religious texts are so imbued with magic and wonder if without something magical--like the resurrection of Jesus from the dead--would his message of being executed by the State for standing up to them with a message of universal and equitable love as an opposition to oppression and wealth-seeking for power have been passed down throughout time. Lauren believes in a ‘Book of the living’ that informs on how to create a paradise for those alive, but without a magical goal it may be a difficult persuasion. Yet, she must still plant the seeds and hope they take in unfamiliar soil. Seeds planting is thematic throughout the novel beyond religious context. Lauren packs different seeds as food in her survival pack--a concept she tries to introduce to her community early on but is shouted down as being alarmist for wanting people to prepare for the worst, an easily empathetic scenario for teens her own age to identify with--and collects different seasonal seeds as the group travels North. When they find a place to possibly settle, it is her seeds that offer hope for a sustainable society to flourish upon. This draws a direct connection between the environmental messages and the religious ones in the novel. ‘The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.’ Beyond progressive critiques of capitalism and expositions on impending climate crisis, Butler’s narrative embraces intersectionality and unity as imperative to survival. ‘Embrace diversity,’ Lauren preaches in her poetry as her group begins to pick up a variety of people, ‘Unite— Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed / By those who see you as prey. / Embrace diversity / Or be destroyed.’ There is a strong message of identifying the usefulness or any individual they welcome into their group, both despite their differences but also by recognizing and embracing differences. Lauren passes herself off as a man to make her initial party appear like a heteronormative couple, which attracts less attention. The biases we find in today’s society are elevated in Butler’s apocalyptic vision to remind us that certain groups bear privileges others do not. By recognizing them they are able to subvert them and take note of which social constructs enable violence upon others. Identifying the points of oppression are necessary to correct them. It’s curious how Butler is always relegated to the Sci-Fi genre and shelved accordingly in bookstores. Not that there's anything wrong with Sci-Fi, but, as Ursula K Le Guin has spoken and written extensively on, the genre is often used as a diminutive to distract from many socially conscious works. She says it is a ‘lingering problem’ in the book community where ‘the maintenance of an arbitrary division between “literature” and “genre... become limitations rather than possibilities (read the full interview here). Why does Parable end up in the Sci-Fi section whereas Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale, McCarthy’s The Road or 1984 and Brave New World are considered Literary fiction? Of the latter two, Butler’s world feels the least dated and is in many ways more socially progressive than any of these aforementioned titles. Her other work, Kindred, happens to contain time travel, yet the Outlander series remains shelved in fiction. Admittedly, many of Butler’s novels are in fact Sci-Fi narratives, but there is a strong literary aspect to them and this is worth considering. For all the dystopian collapse and horror of gangs fueled by drugs that give them sexual satisfaction from fire (yep), the heart of this novel is one of social justice and dramatic social and economic revolution but most importantly the necessity to embrace change in order for these things to grow in a fertile soil of progress. ‘Belief Initiates and guides action— Or it does nothing. Octavia Butler is an absolute gem of a writer and, while it is sad that the current state of world affairs leads people to seek out a book like this, I’m glad Butler was there to have a nearly perfect one ready and waiting. Earthseed is an interesting concept to consider, particularly because it is fairly secular, so those without a religious bent will not be turned off by strong focus on developing an afro-futurist belief system. In fact, it’s all rather beautiful and encouraging. This is the book I would most recommend for those looking for something in the 1984/BNW/etc category of dystopian classics. Butler invites us all to help build a better world before it is too late. 4.5/5 ‘It took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.’ ...more |
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| Oct 23, 2018
| Oct 23, 2018
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really liked it
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‘Every inch of my black skin painted the maroon of life.’ ‘If I had to write a book on morality,’ author and existentialist Albert Camus once wrote in ‘Every inch of my black skin painted the maroon of life.’ ‘If I had to write a book on morality,’ author and existentialist Albert Camus once wrote in his notebooks, ‘it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write ‘I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.’ It seems so simple: to love and to be loved, and one can look to the beauty and love in the world and feel hope but yet far too often we look about and see the absence of love creeping its way like a shadow at dusk through human interactions. Racial injustice, class struggles, violence, profiling, war, misogyny, genocide, all theses and more feast on the absence of love and fear-monger love away in order to attain power. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s incredible debut Friday Black is a harrowing peak into the ways a lack of love and empathy have wormed their way into the heart of society. Across twelve bone-chilling stories taking place from the present to only slightly futuristic, dystopian societies, Adjei-Brenyah points our face directly at racism and injustice while examining the mechanisms underneath that make all these horrors possible. From fear-mongering and blind hatred to irresponsible use of technology and the normalization of stereotypes, these stories confront the conditions of Black people in a world weaponized against them and how that affects them. Through an interplay of the capitalist critique and examinations of racism, Adjei-Brenyah delivers story after story of prophetic power that shows the damnation of a world and reminds us that this is happening and we are all complicit. This author is certainly one to watch in the future and his debut screams with passionate urgency to be read. Having received his MFA at Syracuse University and studying under the wonderful George Saunders one might draw a connection between their works. Sure, both have slightly dystopian settings and well-timed and tempered use of humor that both breaks the tension while also creating an ominous tone that reveals the absurdity in the world, but Adjei-Brenyah rises above mere comparison and is a voice unto himself. These stories smolder on the page and burn themselves right into you and you simply cannot look away. Nor should you. While at worst some of the stories could be called “too on-the-nose”, this in no way detracts from their impact. Adjei-Brenyah’s vision of today cuts right to the afflictions of violence and racism which we cannot ignore. The first story, the Finklestein 5, might be one of the most important stories from 2018 and certainly deserves to be anthologized. If you read only one, this might be the best choice though without the full weight of the collection you’d be doing yourself a massive disservice. This story confronts the everyday of being Black in America and having to be fully conscious of that in every action one takes. Emmanuel started learning the basics of his Blackness before he knew how to do long division: smiling when angry, whispering when he wanted to yell.Emmanuel is constantly checking his Blackness on a scale of 1-10: put his hood up, the number increases, put on a button up shirt and nice shoes, it decreases. Ours is a world where policies like Stop and Frisk have specifically target Black youth and, in the story, Emmanuel is painfully aware that simply being Black is cause enough for a police officer to throw him up against the wall. The story initially unfolds as what would be a typical day for him yet in the background of everyone’s mind is a court case that has just concluded. A white man has taken a chainsaw and murdered five Black children outside a public library, claiming it to be self-defence and has been acquitted. We live in a world where far too often a cop walks free while an unarmed Black youth is buried. Read the poetry of Danez Smith and witness the crushing trauma that assaults a person when this is normalized. The defendant’s lawyer drums up the typical defense and as you read it your blood will boil knowing this is exactly how people walk free. ‘A hardworking, middle-class white man is put in a situation where he has to defend himself,’ the lawyer pleads, ‘all of a sudden he’s a ‘racist’...a ‘murderer’...’ Cue the argument that we need freedom, and suddenly everyone cries patriotic tears because the comforts of whiteness are always centered over the mortality of Black people. You’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. Now Emmanuel is seeing it and everyone in the community is seeing it and it becomes too much to bear. The ‘say their names’ becomes an angry cry and people decide to do something about it. This is a story you will never forget, and I would strongly urge you to read it and confront the way it makes you feel. Adjei-Brenyah is not writing for the comfort of white readers and nor should he; these are stories to challenge people. More pointed is a story called Zimmer Land, which, you guessed it, definitely wants to bring the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman to the forefront of your mind while reading it. In brief, this story follows a young man who is an actor in a virtual reality “park” where players get to experience what it would be like in a real Stand Your Ground scenario. Bluntly, white people pay to be placed in what feels like a real street with a Black man who they are encouraged to use deadly force to stop. Adjei-Brenyah pulls no punches. What works best in these stories is when they look to the way employees in situations such as this are complicit. Take his three stories about a retail employee named IceKing working in a jacket store in a slightly futuristic, absurdist mall reality. While the three stories seem to hint at what could have made a great novella, the fractured nature of them in the collection adds an extra element of uneasiness and loss of stability even in a familiar narrative. The title story, Friday Black, is a comical and frightening look at the Black Friday shopping day from a retail perspective but with piles of trampled dead being swept into a pile in a corner of the mall and people foaming at the mouth stricken with Friday Black: a consumerist madness that basically turns them into zombies. Absurdist, but not far from the truth. I read this while still working as a shift supervisor in the busiest store of our downtown community and have many other retail Black Fridays under my belt and I have to say I was quite charmed by this story. The three stories about IceKing reveal the ugly side of retail where your own abilities are used to further oppress you in the company. Here we see employees sabotaging each other to get the highest sales to win a prize but also doing so regularly because the store is commissioned based. The story In Retail is framed around how to keep your sanity in retail to not end up like a former employee who threw herself out a window to her death while at work. Retail is a tough life, and a lot of really good people get stuck there hoping to finally get out and into a career. You have shift supervisors with multiple degrees, basic employees working on their PhDs, people working multiple jobs just trying to afford rent and companies use this to their advantage. Your most capable employees get all the difficult shifts like working every single weekend. Desperation and financial need gets people giving up days off to take a shift and doing any terrible shift they are asked because making waves is a quick way to get fired and few people have the financial stability to afford that. Suddenly you begin to wonder if your willingness to accept these conditions is making a statement that this is okay and normalizing exploitation that is also harming your coworkers. This comes up frequently in Zimmer Land, that if they are willing to do the job, what does it say about them? Are they complicit in a game that further stigmatizes the Black community and glorifies violence against them? Adjei-Brenyah examines employees who have bought into the vision of their companies and even begin to spout the propaganda in their daily lives (something frequently explored in Orwell’s 1984). Zimmer Land, they say, is about helping people learn who they are, face fears and consider the importance of justice. However, are they ‘equating killing and justice’? And the employees who question this drive themselves mad with a sort of self-gaslighting feeling they are the wrongdoers for being complicit while those who buy into it criticize them for their lack of faith and negative attitudes. This is the way the powerful keep power: by redirecting guilt onto those beneath them and letting them fight amongst themselves when really it is they who bear the responsibility. This recalls Bill Cosby’s unfortunate Pound Cake speech where he placed the blame of racism against the Black community on themselves saying they shouldn’t commit crime if they didn’t want to be profiled as criminals, which completely ignores the long history of social hierarchy and socio-economic conditions that created the conditions of crime. For a good explanation on this, the prologue to Ibram X. Kendi's essential How To Be an Antiracist brilliantly breaks down the inherently racist issues with this mentality (Trevor Noah has a really good explanation on the subject as well from just the other day that you can watch HERE). This is what Ta-Nehisi Coates equates to being like ‘to shoot a man and then shame him for bleeding.’ Adjei-Brenyah brilliantly comingles theories on the oppression with retail employees with the Black community and reminds us that the real problem is those in power who weaponize people against each other, like the employees aggressing each other to get highest sales which, ultimately, mostly benefits the owners. Insert long explanation about surplus labor as theft and then make this a metaphor for white society oppressing black society and suddenly these stories shine out. This is how the powerful retain their power. Those without power vastly outnumber those with and could take it if they organized, but those with power are ensuring they are too tired, too hungry, too poor, too angry and too pitted against each other for that to ever happen. ‘even though I’m being true, they’d say I was being emotional and it was clouding my truth.’ Another major question asked is if they are using this virtual reality technology irresponsibly? Much like in our current lives where we are still discovering how internet technology and social media has changed society, such as reports about how bullying has become worse when the bullying can continue at any moment through social media and teen suicide rates are rising, have we as humans failed in using our own technology responsibly? The story The Era depicts a dystopian society where people are either “clear born”--how we are now--or have pre-birth where geneticists create a more “ideal” human. Naturally there becomes a massive class divide between the two and as society gears more towards the idea of the “ideal” we see it also means cutting off basic empathy. A teacher applauds a student for insulting another saying ‘Back before the Turn, Scotty might not have been honest...and Samantha would go on thinking he thought what she said was smart’. Even the narrator's parents bluntly admit he is a mistake and they didn’t want him, because honesty and empathy have become a sign of weakness. Without love central to how we interact, what sort of world are we building? Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah has created an extraordinary collection of stories that will cut right through you and expose the ways we gas-light ourselves into allowing the horrors of the world to continue. Also this book has some of the most amazing cover art I’ve ever seen. Looking at racism, violence, and then way a capitalist culture upholds itself through oppression of those beneath them. There is something for everyone in here: ghosts, time-looping, dystopia, humor, zombies, retail hell, and more. Its a book you’ll want to have a drink on hand for and it pairs quite nicely with the film Sorry to Bother You which explores a lot of the same themes and resonates with a similar humorously absurdist strength. This is a book where people are crying out for help, yelling please stop, please understand, and those with social capital are distorting the world to turn away from those in need. This is not a comfortable book to read, but it might be one we all need. ⅘ ‘Even the apocalypse isn't the end. That, you could only know when you're standing before a light so bright it obliterates you. And if you are alone, posed like a dancer, when it comes, you feel silly and scared. And if you are with your family, or anyone at all, when it comes, you feel silly and scared, but at least not alone.’ ...more |
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