Son of China

:Bridge Yong'an, Fujian, China
Taken from Wikimedia

I've finished Jimmy Carter's biography of his mother, which was quite good and easy to read, although I think he may have soft-pedaled a few of his mother's faults, as a good son would, I suppose.

Now I'm in the middle of another non-fiction book, a memoir by Da Chen, an American writer from China who has written two books about his life in China, the one I'm now reading, Sounds of the River, and an earlier book, Colors of the Mountain. The earlier book covers his early life during the Cultural Revolution, and the later one covers his college years and beyond.

Sounds of the River is very well written and interesting. China is a complex country and its people are also complex. Their relationship with communism and their increasingly close contact with the West are topics that are not as easy to pin down as Americans might think. I'm learning a lot about China.

Chen writes about how he was chosen to go to Beijing to learn English so he can help his country communicate with the West. But since he is from a little farming village in the Fujian region of China, he is definitely out of his element in the big city and must learn how to get along there. He is not out of his element at school, however, and finds that he is different from many of his classmates who have come from more privileged backgrounds. They don't think they need to work very hard at succeeding in school because of their political connections. But Chen knows he needs to do his best to surpass his more advantaged fellows, and fortunately he is capable of that, thanks to the lessons he learned at home about hard work and persistence.

Chen does a great job of describing his village, his region of China, his family members and other people who live in his neighborhood. I have no trouble visualizing all that he presents. He makes the place and the people seem quite wonderful, and that is what he is aiming for, I think.

Chen has written some fiction as well. I'd like to read more of his work in the future.

Jimmy's Mom

I've started a new book, and in keeping with my new theme of choosing "C" books, I'm reading Jimmy Carter's biography of his mother, Lillian, entitled, A Remarkable Mother. It's actually quite interesting so far and well written. I'm learning about the late 19th century south and farm families such as the Carters and the Gordys. I think I will enjoy it!

Shakespeare's Last Stand

Astor Place Riot, taken from Wikipedia

Well, I've finished The Shakespeare Riots and it was very interesting and well written. At the end, Nigel Cliff concludes that the dramatic Shakespeare people knew and loved in the 19th century was eventually transformed into the literary Shakespeare that we have now, partly because of the changes to American society and partly because of the rise of the popular novel. He's probably right about that, but I wonder if the riots really had more to do with lower class frustration than with Shakespeare.

I had never heard of the Shakespeare riots (or the Astor Place Riot, as it is also known) before reading this book and I was appalled at how violent they were, especially considering the ostensible cause. But then, people who are disgruntled by unfairness will find any reason to express their frustration, no matter how nonsensical it is. Examine any riot and you'll find the same underlying cause: class warfare, the great division between the haves and the have-nots. And that seems to have been at the root of the riots that took place in New York City in 1849.

The people who were killed on May 10, 1849, were mostly killed by gunfire from the New York militia who had come to quell the riot. Up to that time, however, the rioters--mostly working class folk and Irish gangs--were throwing paving stones at police officers. Those weapons could have had lethal consequences as well.

When things threatened to get out of control completely, the National Guard were called in. When the rioters wouldn't stop throwing stones, they were fired upon. Unfortunately, many of those killed (of the total of 25 or so) were innocent bystanders. The authorities were criticized for their actions, as were the National Guard troops at Kent State. Few were critical of the rioters because they came to seem like the victims when the government used its superior force.

It's interesting to me to see how little has changed since then with respect to the conflict between the rich and the poor and how it erupts into violence that ultimately has no effect on the basic structure of society. As with most riots, the outcome was pointless destruction of life and property. Life went on until the next crisis brought the tensions to a head once again.

The boiling over of anger and frustration does not change the power arrangement, in most cases, and so results in very little positive change. Those who rule are happy about that, since they believe the way things are arranged is best for society. The lower classes are not capable of governing and so should be prevented from having power. Perhaps they're right. Is there a way to give the "common people," as they used to be known, power without destroying the society we now have? That's a good question, and one not addressed by Nigel Cliff.

But we are still asking it, especially when we look at how other societies deal with their oppressive governments and the rift between one segment of society and another. We want to help those who yearn for freedom, but then we find that it's much more complex than that, because often when they get freedom, they don't use it in the way we think they should. The Shakespeare Riots were quite complex. Nigel Cliff tried to get at all the causes and I think did a pretty good job of it. But how to prevent such events from recurring? He doesn't really say.

This was a good book that I highly recommend. What's next on my reading list? I'll let you know . . . 

Violent Fans--of Shakespeare!

Nigel Cliff,
taken from his website

I'm now reading a book by Nigel Cliff entitled The Shakespeare Riots, which chronicles events of the mid-nineteenth century focusing on the rivalry between England and U.S. with respect to the world of the theater and its Shakespearean actors. While such a fight might seem intellectual and pretty tame, it was actually quite physical with real anger and outrage bubbling into terrible riots where people were injured and even killed. Who knew such things occurred? It's a fascinating story.

I'm half-way through the book now and the writer is still setting up the background of this particular conflict. I guess he thought it was necessary since it's a pretty unbelievable story on the face of it. I'm learning a lot about the 19th century, in both England and the United States, that makes me appreciate the fullness of the era more than I ever have before. In fact, it has always been my least favorite century, but now I want to read more about it.

Reading about Nigel Cliff (click on link above), I see he's quite smart and talented. He certainly is a good writer. I'm enjoying the book so far, and there's apparently a movie based on it that will be coming out sometime in the future. I'm looking forward to that.

The Evil of Piety and Power

The Dogs of God is a tough read sometimes. Many terrible things happened in late 15th century Europe, all of them caused by humans and their lust for power. Columbus's trip across the ocean was one of them, but only because of what happened as a result of his having discovered this land of abundance within reach of Spanish and other European ships. The trip itself was innocent compared to that. What followed his discovery--the conquests, the devastation, the plunder--was really just another part of the big picture, the ultimate goal. The Spanish King and Queen wanted a wholly Christian Spain and set about making it happen, mostly through murder and war. Conquering the new lands Columbus discovered was just an extension of that. Other European nations soon joined in. Gold was needed to finance all the conquests, or so the monarchs claimed, but before long gold became its own end, as it continues to do to this day. No foreign policy exists that doesn't involve the capture of gold in some form. Nothing has changed. People have not changed and perhaps never will.

The Mystery of 1492

I finished the book of mystery stories, which was quite good, though I didn't really enjoy reading those stories that featured a lot of low-life criminal types. Ah, well. Such is the milieu of crime fiction.

I'm on to non-fiction now with a book about 1492 called Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors, by James Reston Jr. The author focuses on what he considers a pivotal year in world history, one that changed everything and set the stage for the conflicts we're now seeing in the Middle East. It looks to be interesting and is so far very well written.

The Hill Holes

Having finally finished Joe Hill's Nosferatu, I'm afraid I'm rather disappointed. The plot was simple enough to begin with--the good guys had to stop the bad guys who were preying on children and killing adults--but there were so many non-plausible events that the story became pretty ridiculous and annoying by the end. Spoiler alert here! There were many logic holes, I'm afraid. One in particular was the blowing up of Christmasland, the place where all the kidnapped kids were taken, which would have made sense except that Christmasland didn't exist in real terms--it was a place in the mind. How can you blow up a place in the mind? Makes no sense.

And then the children who were being held in Christmasland appeared as real children after the place had been blown up. That too would have made sense (if you accept that such a thing could occur) except that the children had been kidnapped over many years' time, and many would not still have been children by then. In fact, some would have been quite elderly. This logic gap was not dealt with either.

Many of the children were helping the bad guys kill people. But where were they when they weren't with the bad guys? If Christmasland wasn't a real place, where did they live? Also, there was the idea that the Christmas angels that hung on the enormous tree in a real place held the souls of all the children and when the good guys smashed the angels, the children's souls were released and they could stop feeling murderous.  But . . . oh, never mind. I just didn't get this whole idea and it's because the writer did not make it clear.

Joe Hill should really stick to a simpler plot structure so that whatever we need to believe in will be easy to believe in. I don't recommend this book, I'm afraid, and I'm going to be skeptical about future novels by Stephen King's son. It's early in his career--he shouldn't be getting lazy yet, but that seems to be what happened with this book.

Mysteries Native and Imported

I've been slowly working my way through the Best American Mystery Stories 2010 lately, and I must say it's pretty good. The stories are more on the side of literary than pulp, which is fine, though the mysteries are not true mysteries for the most part, at least not in the classical sense of whodunits. They are about crime, but get into the mysteries of the criminal mind or behavior rather than unraveling what happened.

I've also started a more conventional narrative from Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, who has followed in his father's footsteps writing supernatural/horror fiction. Nosferatu (NOS4A2) is a library book, so I'm cheating a little reading a book that isn't diminishing my book collection. Oh, well. It's a pretty good story, if a little bit wordy (Hill's like his father in that way, too).

A Country of Laws

Thurgood Marshall

Continuing to listen to Root and Branch, I continue to be amazed at the courage and intelligence of those who were fighting the legal battle to end segregation and improve the conditions under which many black people suffered because of the extreme bias of U.S. laws and the white supremacist culture that was dominant during most of the 20th century.

It had never occurred to me that the civil rights battle being waged in the courts was every bit as important as that being waged in the streets, and that in fact it was the only way to truly make headway in a society that was not changing its view of the Negro race (as they once termed it) any time soon. Non violent protest was very important, but it went hand in hand with legal battles that inch by inch made it illegal to treat our citizens in that shockingly brutal way that had been legal for so many centuries. Such treatment amounted to terrorism before that word and what it describes became so well known.

But I should have known, since I am a supporter of the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose central work involves using the law to fight civil rights battles even today--perhaps especially today. I'm thinking now that this institution continued the work started by Houston and Marshall and others like him. Unfortunately it continues to be necessary, given that the descendants and followers of the people who fought against blacks' becoming full citizens maintain their desire to put things back the way they were, when people could be tortured, beaten, jailed and even killed with impunity, with the full cooperation--and often instigation--of the law.

We're into the 1940s now in the narrative, just before things really got heated up down South. Marshall and the others have begun working on Southern criminal cases of injustice that boggle the mind they are so brutal and blatant. And the backlash is becoming quite severe, the work quite dangerous. I'm anxious to see how things will turn out, but part of me wants to turn away from the reality of those days--the horrific images tend to stick with me, a testament to the writer's skill.

I'll be back here to finish the story soon.

Root and Branch of Segregation

I've started reading one of the audiobooks in my collection this week, listening to it in my car! It's pretty cool to have a CD player in my car. They've sure come a long way since the old days when the CD players were affected by the motion of the car!

Anyway, the book is Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation, by Rawn James Jr.  It is a history of the landmark civil rights Supreme Court decision known as Brown v. Board of Education and the many events that led up to it. It is in part a biography of the two men named in the title. So far, it's fascinating stuff!

As with many books of African American history, it's also painful and disturbing to read. The author doesn't pull any punches about the horrors of the early 20th century when blacks were frequently subject to or under threat of torture, murder, terrorism, and extreme injustices. The efforts of Marshall and Houston, as well as many others who sacrificed to help end segregation and its evils, are shown to be heroic in the face of many formidable obstacles.

Though I already knew some things about this era from my previous studies, I am learning a great deal more about this complex campaign. One of the things that never fails to amaze me about the civil rights struggle is how much people with the courage to take enormous risks were able to accomplish--daring to do the unthinkable was often rewarded with success!  For instance, when Charles Houston took over as Dean of Washington D.C.'s Howard University Law School, he decided to remake the entire program so that it could acquire accreditation (it did) and thereby be taken seriously by the nation. This was crucial, he believed, in order for the graduates of Howard's Law School to be taken seriously and get work as lawyers so they could help those who were hurt by Jim Crow laws and the many injustices endured by black people in America. The ultimate goal for Houston was to dismantle segregation forever, a goal that could only be achieved, he believed, by changing the laws that supported the unjust system.

One thing I learned early in the book was that Woodrow Wilson was instrumental in reestablishing segregation in Washington DC and was a avid supporter of it during his administration. It's hard to believe so many people thought the apartheid system we had in this country (and still do to a certain extent) was a good thing that should continue, especially given the evils it produced. Also eye-opening was the detailed account of how very un-equal schools were back in the early 20th century, information that was gleaned from a fact-finding trip taken by Houston and Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the NAACP in preparation for the fight they would undertake and eventually win on May 17, 1954.

Anyway, I'm enjoying this book immensely and already believe it is worth reading by anyone who wants to know about America's history.