Morrison, Toni "A Mercy"

Morrison, Toni "A Mercy" - 2008

In my post about Anti-Racism, I listed many, many books that tell us a lot about the lives of black people past and present. This is another one from the past that I will add to that list.

In this day and age, nobody should have to suffer from being "different" (no matter what that entails) and, yet, so many still do. When I see all the accusations made against former US President Barack Obama, it shows that even when you have worked your way up and are an excellent, qualified person, it doesn't help you if people don't like the colour of your skin. You still get no respect.

In this story, Toni Morrison tells us all about a little girl called Florens. She is lucky in a way that she gets into this family. Her "master" is not abusive. That doesn't say she is to envy. If you can't decide where you want to live, whether you want to stay with your family (and which eight-year-old wouldn't?) or what kind of work you would like to do, you are never to be envied.

Having said that, I'm just reading another book ("Capital" by Karl Marx) and from what we can learn there, poor people in Europe were not in a much better position, either. However, that's not an excuse.

Coming back to this story. It's not just a story of Florens but of all the female members of that family, the Native American Lina, Sorrow who was shipwrecked and Rebecca, the owner's wife who was sent over from England and didn't know her husband before she got married. They all have a different kind of fate but are all in this together.

Toni Morrison knows well how to describe the feelings of her characters, you can follow her stories as if you were a member of the family, as if you were one of the characters in her book.

Her books should become a required reading in all the schools. Maybe, just maybe, we would all understand racism a little better. Her Nobel Prize is well-deserved.

Florens' mother describes her arrival in Barbados after her capture in Africa and a long sea voyage:
"It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families. I was negrita. Everything. Language, dress, gods, dance, habits, decoration, song– all of it cooked together in the colour of my skin."

I think this says it all. What is it that defines us? Certainly not the colour of our skin. You might as well say someone with dark (or light hair) is worth less than someone with light (or dark). What's the difference? The difference is only what some of us make of it.

From the back cover:

"On the day that Jacob agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment of a debt, little Florens' life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress Florens has never blended into the background and now, aged eight, she is taken from her family to begin a new life. She ends up part of Jacob's household, along with his wife Rebekka, their Native American servant Lina and the enigmatic Sorrow, who was rescued from a shipwreck. Together these women face the trials of their harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutal landscape of the north of America in the seventeenth century."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Read more about other books by the author here.

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Seasonal Books ~ Winter

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish".

It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

Holiday/Seasonal Freebie

(holiday books/covers/titles, wintry reads, snow on cover, cool color covers, etc. 

 

Winter will only start next week but I quite like the topic. And I have a few lovely books that I read representing this. Winter, Snow, Cold. (Mind you, I didn’t care much for the last one but some people do, so I included it anyway.)

 

Calvino, Italo "If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller" (Italian: Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore) - 1979
Follett, Ken "Winter of the World" - 2012 (part of a trilogy)
Hannah, Kristin "Winter Garden" - 2010
Stachniak, Eva "The Winter Palace. A Novel of Catherine the Great" - 2011

Guterson, David "Snow Falling on Cedars" - 1994
Hamill, Pete "Snow in August" - 1998
Høeg, Peter "Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow" (Danish: Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne) - 1992
Pamuk, Orhan "Snow" (Turkish: Kar) - 2002

Frazier, Charles "Cold Mountain" - 1997
Gibbons, Stella "Cold Comfort Farm" - 1932

Fatland, Erika "Sovietistan"

Fatland, Erika "Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan" (Norwegian: Sovjetistan. En reise gjennom Turkmenistan, Kasakhstan, Tadsjikistan, Kirgisistan og Usbekistan) - 2014

After reading "The Border" by this Norwegian author where she travels all around the Russian border and visits every adjoining country, I was eager to read her first book where she visited the Central Asian "Stans" who became independent after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

I was not disappointed. Erika Fatland seems like someone who really researches what she does. She speaks several languages, i.a. Russian which makes it easier but she still meets many people who don't speak any of the languages she knows. You can definitely tell she knows a lot about exploring other cultures. And it's interesting to read a woman's perspective about this part of the world, doesn't happen too often.

There is so much history in the part of the world, longer than the European one, definitely longer than any of the "new world" and this book makes us aware that we should always look at someone's history if we try to understand them. From the Mongolian invaders through the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, these countries have all had to endure a lot. It's not easy to go back to what we would call "normal democracy" in just one generation. Some of the countries seem to be on a better way than others but I'm sure it will still take a long time until all the inhabitants will be able to live a free life.

The author tells us about the Silk Road, the mountains and valleys, the rich cities of the past (like Samarkand, doesn't that name just conjure some dreamy 1001 night-like picture?). And the ethnic people who have inhabited this area for thousands of years. In telling her story where it fits in the historical parts she mentions, she gives us a good idea about how life in those countries seems to be. From old cultures like bride-stealing to the wealth brought through oil, there is a lot to take in.

We hear about Genghis Khan and Amir Timur or Tamerlane, two Mongol conquerors, who influenced the region just as much as Stalin later on.

A while ago I read a book about the Hutterer (The Forgotten People) who came to Canada via this region and Erika Fatland also mentions the Mennonites who suffered the same fate, some of whom still occupy their area. It was interesting to compare these two religious' groups.

But those are not the only interesting people the traveller met. There are so many anecdotes about the people she met and how she often was welcomed with open arms.

There is this guy (Igor Savitsky, see here on Wikipedia) who founded a museum in the middle of nowhere, even in Uzbek standards, the State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakistan, named after I.V. Savitsky, also known as Nukus Museum of Art or Savitsky Museum and the Desert of Forbidden Art.

Or she talks to human rights activists, people who live in the mountains without any electricity or anything else we all consider necessary to live a decent life. They don't and chose to live like that. Totally interesting.

As always, it was great to read about a part of the world we know so little about. Most Europeans would even be able to find the right countries on a map if questioned let alone name the capital cities. I've learned them now and hope to remember them:
Kazakhstan: Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana
Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek
Tajikistan: Dushanbe
Turkmenistan: Ashgabat
Uzbekistan: Tashkent

Granted, there are so many topics in this book, anthropology, communism, dictatorship, economy, ecology, human rights, politics, religion, sociology, you name it, everything that fits into human life is there, but it is still a highly pleasurable read.

I also really appreciated to see this world through the eyes of a woman. A woman who grew up in a free world and therefore would see more of the restrictions women in these countries have to live with than any man ever would. Well done, Erika!

This was our international online book club read in November 2020.

Some comments by the readers:

• I had once read a travel book I didn't like, therefore didn't think I would like this one, but it absolutely gripped me and held my interest through all the many layers of history, politics, culture, travelling, etc.
• At the meeting we talked a lot about how the USSR nostalgia seem to appear and how for example we in Finland reading this book might be reacting to that.
• Personally, I really, really enjoyed this book. It definitely widened my knowledge of a lot of things and was really well written.
  

From the back cover:

"Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world.

Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the reader on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.

In Kyrgyzstani villages, she meets victims of the tradition of bride snatching; she visits the huge and desolate Polygon in Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union tested explosions of nuclear bombs; she meets shrimp gatherers on the banks of the dried out Aral Sea; she witnesses the fall of a dictator.

She travels incognito through Turkmenistan, a country that is closed to journalists. She meets exhausted human rights activists in Kazakhstan, survivors from the massacre in Osh in 2010, and German Mennonites that found paradise on the Kyrgyzstani plains 200 years ago. We learn how ancient customs clash with gas production and witness the underlying conflicts between ethnic Russians and the majority in a country that is slowly building its future in nationalist colors.

Once the frontier of the Soviet Union, life follows another pace of time. Amidst the treasures of Samarkand and the brutalist Soviet architecture, Sovietistan is a rare and unforgettable adventure."

Book Quotes of the Week

Word cloud made with WordItOut

"MY BOOK!
I did it!
I did it!
Come and look
At what I’ve done!
I read a book!
When someone wrote it
Long ago
For me to read,
How did he know
That this was the book
I’d take from the shelf
And lie on the floor
And read by myself?
I really read it!
Just like that!
Word by word,
From first to last!
I’m sleeping with
This book in bed,
This first FIRST book
I’ve ever read!"
David L. Harrison
I often still have the feeling with any book I read, especially if it speaks to me and has been written a long, long time ago.

"He found solace in what he wrote. It was an attempt to discover who he was at the moment." Brian Krans, A Constant Suicide
And then we often find solace in what others wrote.

"It’s one of the greatest gifts that reading can give a person: easy access to peace inside, even when the world outside is in shambles." Jennifer Williamson
And one of the easiest gifts you can find.

Find more book quotes here.

Marx, Karl "Capital"

Marx, Karl "Capital. Critique of Political Economy" (German: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie) - 1867

For my classic non-fiction November read I chose a book I wanted to read for ages. "Capital". When I first joined Facebook, I used to take part in some of their "games" and found that I am very liberal (not a surprise), "as far left as can be before heading into Stalin's backyard". That was a US American test, of course. (Compared to their Republicans, that is certainly true.) But I know Karl Marx would turn in his grave if he saw what has been made out of his ideas in many countries. The Scandinavians are probably the best examples of what he wished for the people. And I belong to those people who "believe" in public healthcare, free education for everyone, a decent minimum wage, a good retirement plan, everything people are against who think that brings "communism" to their country.

But enough of that, I think I've said it often enough and I know people who don't agree but don't come up with a better answer. They seem to think it's great that the super-duper rich get away with paying low income tax whilst others go hungry.

So, the book. When I announced at the classics club that I was reading this in November, I received a lot of comments like "tough read", "well done, you, would be too hard for me". Actually, at the beginning, I thought it was rather boring. My background is more or less business, at least I had to take a lot of classes in that direction during my education. So, I knew how demand and supply set the price, material and manufacture together are the basis for that.

But all in all, there is a lot in this book about the beginning of industrialism and what went wrong there for the "little man", weirdly enough, a lot of that still is wrong, the worker is still exploited by the employer. See minimum wage discussions. They have more rights nowadays (thanks to those "bl...y" trade unions, another idea most conservatives are against) but that doesn't mean that many employers won't try to circumnavigate them and, if they have to adhere to it, won't go one step further than they have to.

I am sure there are many books around who explain this better in a contemporary way even for the most die-hard opponents to understand that the world doesn't just turn around themselves, that it would be so much nicer if people gave up their selfish attitudes. But I doubt they would want to understand them. This book and ideology have been around for more than 150 years now and not much has changed. Unfortunately.

This also is a great history lesson.

Granted, the book has some drier parts but all in all, I believe it is very readable. I would love to discuss this with people who have read it and see whether their opinions have changed.

Quote:
"Let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common."

From the back cover:

"Capital by Karl Marx is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics. Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production, in contrast to classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Marx did not live to publish the planned second and third parts, but they were both completed from his notes and published after his death by his colleague Friedrich Engels. Capital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950. The Communist Manifesto (originally Manifesto of the Communist Party) is an 1848 political pamphlet by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents.

Wage Labour and Capital is an essay on economics by Karl Marx, written in 1847 and first published in articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. This essay has been widely acclaimed as the precursor to Marx's important treatise Das Kapital.

Value, Price and Profit was a speech given to the First International Working Men's Association in June in 1865 by Karl Marx. It was written between the end of May and June 27 in 1865, and was published in 1898. Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a famous German philosopher, economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist."

This was instigated by our Classics Club reading challenge. I found them through Words and Peace. Thank you.

See also:
Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich "The Communist Manifesto" (GE: Das kommunistische Manifest) - 1848

Happy December!

Happy December to all my friends and readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch

"Auf dem Weg zum Nordpol"
"On the Way to the North Pole"

  I don't think Hanka Koebsch thought that so many people might want to follow the two characters in her painting on the way to the North Pole now. Who could have imagined last year that we would wish us to be anywhere but where there are many people around?

Usually, December is the time where the days get shorter, the temperature colder and wetter. But we can also look forward to lovely evenings at home with the family celebrating advent and Christmas or outside on Christmas markets and later welcoming the new year. I don't think there has been a new year as eagerly awaited since the end of the last World War. Let us all hope that it will be better than this one and that it brings us relief from Covid-19.

* * *

At least it has done our environment some good. We still have a long way to go but let's hope that even the last climate change sceptics have learned it now (after at least half a century that really should be a discussion point any more). I think this year has shown us that we need to do something.

The "German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation" (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland) declared the broad-leaved marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza majalis) for their orchid of the year. Orchids are not my favourite flowers but these don't look much like those imported versions, they live in our wet meadows and are endangered because most of these biotopes are roded nowadays.

Let's hope they still bring joy to us for many, many years to come.

* * *

I wish you all a very happy December. And don't be too sad if you have to celebrate Christmas alone. We don't think our sons can come this year, they both live in different countries, we all have different rules and regulations and even if it is possible, it's really too dangerous to travel. So, if you can only see your kids from time to time, think about me. We saw our oldest son in March, shortly before Corona started and then both boys in August when it was easier for them to travel. And that's it. But with the internet and all the modern possibilities to talk to each other, we are not in such a bad position as our grand-parents and great-grand-parents were a hundred years ago.

* * *

And think about the Islandic tradition of Jólabókaflóð! Maybe a good way to spend Christmas instead.

* * *

And one more quote from one of the books I just read: "Did it ever occur to you … that tolerance can reach a point where it is no more tolerance? When that happens, the noble-sounding attitude which most of us pride ourselves degenerates into weakness and acquiescence." Grace Metalious, "Peyton Place"

* * *

Have a happy December with this beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch. Stay safe!


You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.

You can also have a look under my labels Artist: Frank Koebsch and Artist: Hanka Koebsch where you can find all my posts about them.

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Authors that Deserve More Recognition

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish".

It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

Our topic for today would be Book Quotes (these could be quotes from books or quotes about books/reading). Since January 2013, I've been posting them every week and you can find a list of all the quotes I ever gathered here.
Also, we did a TTT about book quotes in September (see here).

So, I thought I'd search through the old themes and choose one of those that I missed.

Authors that Deserve More Recognition
 

There are a couple of authors that I count among my favourite ones but if I mention them, most people either say "I never read a book by them" or, even worse, "I have never heard of them". Therefore, I like this topic and hope that some of you will pick up at least one of their books:

Falcones, Ildefonso (Spanish/Catalan)
Frazier, Charles (US American)
Fredriksson, Marianne (Swedish)
Ghosh, Amitav (India/Bangladesh)
Hislop, Victoria (British/English)
Lawson, Mary (Canadian)
Rutherfurd, Edward (British/English)
Schami, Rafik (Syrian, writes in German)
Sendker, Jan-Philipp (German)
Waltari, Mika (Finnish)

My favourite one by any of them is in the the pictures, you find all the other books I read by them in the link.

And which authors would you recommend?