shorshewitch's reviews
281 reviews

Expo'58 in Brussels was an international fair that became famous for various reasons - one of them being the "Atomium", a giant aerial structure representing the atom of an iron crystal 165 billion times magnified. It also gained much deserved infamy because of its display of a human zoo in the form of a Congolese village. Approx 600 actual people were "displayed" in this zoo, the section meant to demonstrate the Belgian colonialist claims of having "civilized" the "savage" natives. 

🍂 This Expo'58 forms the backdrop of Blaise's novel. Two Kuba princesses of Kinshasa, two formidable young women, form the protagonists of the story. The story occurs in two time periods, 1957-58 and then 46 years later in 2004-05, with locations spanning from Brussels to the Belgian Congo. Some of the events and people in the story are not fiction, like Wendo Kolosoy, Patrice Lumumba and most significantly, the brutality and human cost of colonialism. 

🍂 Like most descriptions of the book say, it is an ambitious story, told majorly in the form of first person narrative. In the first part, Tshala Nyota Moelo speaks to her niece Nyota Kwete, and in the second part, Nyota Kwete recites the story in the form of a monologue to her grandpa, King Kena Kwete III. The ancillary characters also have their own stories and ghosts to deal with. It is a very interesting writing style, with long sentences, and multiple character references for the same person. For the first 40% it took me a bit of getting used to, but once I caught the various threads running through the story, and read up a bit more about the history of the region, the next 60% caught pace.

🍂 There are plenty of trigger warnings. Rape, miscarriage, patriarchy, racism, sexual violence - are just a few that are at the top. The biggest trigger warning is the barbarism of the colonialist. No matter the number of books one reads and the stories one hears, the extent of exploitation will always remain deeply disturbing.

🍂 I think I will read the first 40% again after a few months because Tshala's voice will sound different now that I know exactly what happened to her eventually. It's a remarkable book, albeit a bit heavy.

🍂 I read this as a part of #translatedgemsbookclub 's March reading.

🌱 A fundamental part of our existence is defined by the language we express ourselves in. That is why when we seek liberation, we first look for words in the language we're most comfortable in, to feel them, then perhaps modify them to encompass the spirit of freedom. 

🌱 When you suppress a language and alphabets of a people, you make them hold it tighter than ever. As you read through "Kurdistan + 100 : Stories from a Future State", you see the words held tight and close, at last spill over in a manner of a free flowing river. You see subjects dealt with through science fiction, magical realism, climate activism and the power of dreams, ambitions, anticipation and yearning coursing through all of them. 

🌱 I read it as an English translation, and while I will always gripe about not being able to read it in the language in which stories are written, (but then like Geetanjali Shree of Tomb of Sand said "We should not agonise about what is lost in translation. Something always changes when you move from one language to another. It will mingle with something new to become another rich entity."), I will always be glad to have gotten a chance to read it in whatever way I could.

🌱 The stories with their indomitable spirit of liberty, are derived from years of resistance and need for autonomy, as communities work together towards each other's upliftment. There is sadness but such unbridled hope and resilience, that the hope at times breaks heart, but people cannot afford to have desolation define their actions. 

🌱 A few writers of the stories are at this point either in exile or in prison, and the historical and political import aside, the fact makes this collection significant by multitudes. 

🌱 Thank you @translatedgems for the pick and you probably know by now that I am going to bug you for more Kurdish recommendations. 🥲 

🌱 I will speak it out loud because I can and owe it.
 
Jin
Jiyan
Azadi
Kurdistan

🌿 //‘They’ve taken everything else from us: our mountains are black with their bombs, our walnut trees were plucked from the land, our land is barren and dead, and we can’t even speak in our language anymore. The sun, fire, and the foxes of our old stories are all we can give our children.’//

🌿 //It dawned on me that the distinction between horror and entertainment lay in your proximity to the events unfolding.//

🌿 //She would take my hand in hers and continue, ‘Although they may build many nests on the land, their trees will never take root.’ Before my grandma passed away she whispered in my ear, then took a seed wrapped in a green headscarf from under her pillow, and pressed it into my hand. Since that moment, my hand has felt a strong connection to the turpentine tree. I have crossed mountains and valleys, planting these trees wherever I go. Using a small spade I carry with me I dig into the soil, plant the seed and gently cover it. This earth is not the same earth as that which covers the faces of dead people. It is a living substance which has witnessed storms, wars, and genocides. But each time it is reborn.//

🌿 //Who can say that the trees are not like our children? Ever since my grandma put that seed in my hand, I have been holding onto the idea of it. It wasn’t just a tree, it was a thought that I watered every morning. Even if she wasn’t thirsty, still I gave her water. I filled my hands at Kaniya Xanike spring and gently let it trickle down into her soil. Sometimes the village women laughed at me and said, ‘The roots of the tree reach down to a well of water, you don’t need to give it handfuls of water like that.’ They didn’t know that I wasn’t giving that water out of necessity, but out of love.//

#translatedgemsbookclub #translatedbooks #kurdistan #kurdistan🇹🇯

This collection is very different from author's Your Utopia. I think I liked Your Utopia much more than this. I also think the author has evolved as a writer. A lot. 

🐱  I read this book as a part of the February reading of @indigenousreadingcircle

🐱  This is easily my first extremely horrifying book of this year, and I have read a book this year that has feces turning into a full ass human. So you get the drift. 

🐱  The plot happens on a Flathead reservation where whites are as prejudiced as ever. Their bars have placards of "No dogs or Indians allowed". 

🐱  Louise White Elk, a young Native American woman, is trying her best to live the way she wants in a world that only has several odds stacked against her. Baptiste Yellow Knife is a Native American man, who has, despite the white man and his persistence, defied movement from the Native ways. Charlie Kicking Woman, the opposite of his cousin Yellow Knife, has become a stooge of the white man and his systems. The story is narrated from the povs of these three people, and as you read, you figure that the povs of the woman and the men while narrating the same incidents, differ a LOT from each other. Almost like they're talking of different incidents altogether. Charlie's pov of being a cop under the white man, and how it affects his identity and community, is a very revealing read. 

🐱  People do things for survival as they think fit. But the reservation, with its extreme weather changes, ferocious rivers, unending violence, oppression, abuse, and snakes, decides how and who gets to survive. 

🐱  This is a grim tale. The writing is poetic and full of similes in so many places, it becomes heavy, not just because of the way it's done but also because of the story it's attempting to tell. I found it a bit slow initially. I also struggled to invest in the characters for the first 60% but then the plot suddenly sped up and things started to happen quickly. I now feel I should go back and read the 60% again because I am sure I missed a few things I should have caught on. The last 40% is hauntingly beautiful. I am still unsure of the dynamics of the main characters and I have several questions but I am glad I kept going and finished the book. I learnt a lot of things I wouldn't have otherwise learnt. 

🐱  I am very keen now to explore more by the author and the genre.

🐱 Quotes 🐱

"I got the call no more than ten minutes into my shift. Some Indian disturbing the peace in the Dixon Bar. I was sick and tired of those calls, sick of the sign above every small bar and tavern across the state of Montana and beyond, anywhere there was an Indian, no dogs or indians allowed. Tired of being the authority charged to uphold a law that forbid me to enter a bar when I wasn’t in uniform. Who the hell was I to haul off a brother looking for small comfort? "

"And I stood there, dumb to the nuns. I stood there with a pencil and a hardback report and I couldn’t make sense of any of it. It just seemed to me the more good the white man tried to do for us the more trouble we had. The government thought it was a good thing for the Indians to attend the white man’s school, to be instructed by a group of women who had never known love. Women who were more lost than we were as a troop of wild-eyed Indians, homesick, lousy, smelling like woodsmoke. Women who came from France, women who came from Germany. Women who were more like us Indians than they cared to admit. Women who had lost their identities, too, even their names, like our names, were lost to them. Nuns. Sisters who were not sisters. Their hands so white there was a gray look about them.
And I used to think they hated us. I’d been struck by these women, had my ears slapped for laughing, had been cuffed so hard I bit through my lower lip. But I felt sorry for these women and their lonesome lives. I used to walk up behind the school and look at the graveyards of all these women buried far from their families, knowing that long after we had left the Ursulines’ they would stay."

White man, touted as the "world's smartest man", figures out his killing millions of people is not going to help end the wars, thereby realizing he is not the world's smartest man after all. 🥲 

As someone who has been indoctrinated since birth into monogamy, I could never really understand being with more than one partner at a time. As someone with abandonment issues, crippling anxiety and relationship trauma from the past, most of the tenets of polyamory seemed always painful. Not to forget how polyamory is used as a convenient excuse to avoid commitment by most folks around or get themselves threesomes.

Alex Alberto's (@thatalexalberto ) book, therefore, is my first ever book for understanding and familiarizing myself with polyamory. And it was absolutely unputdownable. 

I'm in awe of Alex's clarity of thought, the ability to articulate those with such lucidity, their charming wit, and disarmingly unflinching candour, even as they navigate through their vulnerabilities and muddled emotions. 

The book is a compilation of Alex's essays about their own journey in polyamory, the challenges they faced, the love and positives they experienced, the community they built. The book doesn't follow a timeline, but it follows themes like coming out, polyamory in public places and govt organizations, breakups, attractions, tricky situations etc. Alex also talks honestly about the power of English language in their journey, and about how heritage, culture and the requirement for mother tongues to be inclusive, play such a definitive role in identities. 

When Alex narrates the episodes with their partner's parents, one feels the intensity and tension rise upto one's throat. I had to keep the book aside for a while before picking it back up. They make an interesting choice of not capitalizing the Ms and Ps of the words maman and papa for their own parents. I have always seen them written in capital. And that's why it feels intentional. They talk in detail about how difficult it's been for them to make friendships because of their queerness. 

They also reimagine popular monogamous movies as polyamorous. It is a side observation that it looks like we root more for only those that have sufficient pain and suffering, and somehow fail to imagine or probably even want to see a world where all parties are truly happy and content.

I've learnt so many new words, I am super grateful for that. Metamour, compersion, polycule, Zuntie. Eye-opening. 

I also learnt that there are certain things that enable a successful polyamorous lifestyle. It is way more difficult than monogamous relationships. Monogamous relationships are ok if they're working for you, but most times folks become lazy and bored in monogamy at some point (honestly I've seen way too many extremely problematic monogamous relationships). They start looking for the zing outside, which is a sure shot formula for the relationship to crumble. Alex, therefore, presents a beautiful thought. They implore us to ask ourselves if it's fair to put all the pressures of a good relationship on one single person or to take all that pressure on us. Would this not cause resentment eventually? 

Having said, Alex also draws from their own experiences some clear facts that have worked for them. 
Knowing yourself well (and sometimes one doesn't know what one wants until one has had to face something one doesn't want), having enough earning to navigate two homes or different cities / states in order to be able to be present for partners, having enough words to have enough conversations about your desires and needs and wishes (this requires immense reading and researching), finding folks with whom you can freely navigate through even the bitter emotions. 

It is a bit scary and plenty complicated and not many are brave enough to embark on such a journey. If done properly though, it looks like a great response to capitalism's obsession with individualism. 

I am going to explore books on polyamory to learn more - some of them Alex speaks about and some more. I am incredibly thankful to Alex for writing this and would definitely look forward to reading more of them.

Bora Chung's "Cursed Bunny" has been on my TBR since about 2 years now. 

Reading 'Your Utopia' just pushes it way up and I am hoping to finish reading it sooner and definitely this year. 

This is a fast paced, neatly written book that contains a collection of 8 stories. Each story has an element of science fiction. The stories become progressively science fiction-y as you read through. There is one where an elevator falls in love with a senior citizen, then another in which a robocar finds a friend in an android, and another where trees speak and disperse pollen at greedy humanoids. Those of you who know me a bit might guess which one is my fav and why is it the one where there is pollen. 🥲 

I am super excited about the Q & A with the author on 24th feb that's being organized and hosted by @translatedgemsbookclub. They also picked the book for us.

Some of the quotes / excerpts I lourrveedd. 

//There really is no such thing as discussion. We can give it fancier words like “negotiation” or “calibrating expectations” and such, but in the end, it’s just one side that wins and the other has to give in. Even when both sides agree to compromise, there is always a side that compromises more than the other. Which makes one think that “compromise” is not a thing that really exists, either. All discussions and all negotiations are wars, and the result is always that one side ends up being the intimidating, violent side. This is especially true when the other side stubbornly insists on a perspective that one cannot compromise to. If the other side asks for an arm or a leg, or some other part of the body that can’t be regenerated, the only reasonable thing to do is refuse.//

//If God is a man, he could never understand the mundane threats women experience every single day of our lives.//

//We only need one of those seeds to sprout. Just one. One is enough.
Some of us suggest running away, but truth be told, there is nowhere left for us to run. The humans beyond the forest have conquered the world with their rapidly moving, intelligent machines. The only things we can lean on are our roots and two feet. When the large machines return, our roots will be pulled from the ground, and we will wither away in experimental labs and prisons.
But our seeds will survive. Of our countless seeds, surely at least one will survive. And somewhere, it will take root.

And we will start over again.
For the sake of that one, we wait. For the day they return over the horizon, not via a large, dirty machine but in the form of a pollen message. For the day the seeds we spread return, dancing in the wind.

If such a day truly comes, that will be the day humanity, the whole world, will be reborn. The earth and oceans will no longer be wounded, and humans and nature will both stretch their arms toward the sun.

We are still waiting.//

I read this as a part of the @translatedgems'  #translatedgemsbookclub, January read. 

From Genesis, we know that the flood lasted a total of one year and ten days. The raven and the dove were released over a period of 21 days after the mountaintops became visible. The raven served as a first attempt to discover dry land, and the dove became Noah’s way of determining when to leave the ark.

Whether or not this relates to Ravens before Noah by Susanna Harutyunyan (translated by Nazareth Seferian) is unclear, it does, however, seem to attempt to base itself on the premise. 

Set in the Armenian mountains somewhere between 1915 to 1960, the plot revolves around a child who has escaped the 1894 Hamidian massacres in Turkey, with an old man. The story tells us about the village that the old man and the child build (a possible interpretation of the Noah's Ark), sheltering those displaced, tortured, helping them survive and escaping their old lives.  The villagers use the good old barter system to exchange goods and services and other than your general patriarchy, cultural chasm coupled with selfish greed and basic violence, the village looks like a good place to at least stay alive. The world outside seems far worse. 

The child grows up to become a young man, Harout, responsible for the business of the village with the outside world, but no one other than him knows how to get out or get in the village. Until one day... And so the story goes. 

I couldn't place the raven. It could be a tombstone that was placed on the village border at one point, or one of the other main characters, Nakshun, who found the village, half dead and pregnant, tortured and raped by the Turks, or even one of the side characters who played a small role that caused a significant development. I don't even know if my interpretation of the Ark is right. It totally could work the other way round, if one assumed the tinsmith who came to the village one day to be the raven. It all is kept open. 

The narrative shifts drastically from one page to another. The POVs and the timelines also take a massive turn sporadically, and one has to keep up with the frantic changes happening. If one is like me, then they would be slow to grasp, most likely would only know by the middle of a passage that this was something related to another thing they read a few pages back, but one does catch up eventually. It is fascinating. You might discover things about your own brain and level of grasping. That said, the style is also dangerous. Might not suit some readers. The possibility of a DNF is huge. 

But if you keep going, there is a fantastic story for you. And some very intriguing characters, food descriptions, and cultural innuendos. 

I will probably spend the next few days googling Armenian genocide, history, food, dresses, folklore, magic etc. It should be an engaging time.