Read: February 13th - 70/435 pages
I've been interested in East Africa because I'm travelling to Tanzania later this year. While having fun doing research online, I also ended up invested in Namibia, Angola and Uganda, so I seeked out a book. My library didn't have a very indepth Africa section, but this book has been pretty good.
Read: February 13th - March 3rd
I recently had a trip through Native land in Nevada and so when I saw this book at the library I instantly wanted to read it. The first interview had me reading through tears the entire time. I cried a lot throughout the whole thing. The amount of pain detailed in all of these interviews, even the less extreme ones, hurts me so much. The harm of colonialism and the US's & Canada's governments is not talked about nearly enough. There is also a lot of joy in these statements. Reading about the connection to their communities & the earth that is felt during rituals, events, and spiritual practices was really compelling to me. I'm white and I've always felt very disconnected from even my extended family, and to know that there are people who have become so connected to the area around them makes me hopeful. There is a very wide amount of accounts in here - people on reservations, with no connection to their culture, who grew up on the land, who switched between the, - and it was interesting to the see the similar threads throughout all these locations. Lots of homelessness, sexual abuse, and alcoholism no matter where you look.
Read: January 2nd-12th
One of my highschool teachers gave me this as a graduation gift. It contains several surreal stories that are told as if its completely normal. I really enjoyed these stories, except for one in the middle (Light And The Sufferer) that I found way too long and disrupted my interest in these short stories.. I enjoyed the more surreal and hard to understand stories a lot more than the ones written in clear, matter of fact fashions.
My favourite story was the very first story, Al by Carol Emshwiller. I enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness writing style and the weird facts of the world they live in. They talk about enjoying music & art as if its a feature only of their particular culture (they live in an isolated town) and I liked that a lot for some reason. The narrator also yearns a lot, and plans/thinks about her life with the mysterious Al figure, which reminded me of myself a lot. I like to plan my life with any stranger I think looks interesting LOL.