Book Report: Run to Overcome

I read this book because I love Meb.  I kept reading this book because I love Meb. 

In short, this wasn't a great book.  But Meb is a really great guy.  He does great work, loves his family, runs really hard, is the personification of the American Dream, and currently the best American marathoner.

But he isn't a writer.

The story of his life should be and could be documented in more complete and interesting way.  There is no doubt a fantastic story to be told that unfolds in Meb's life.

I finished it because I love this guy, and respect him very much.  I still hope he runs and wins another marathon. 

2 starts out of 5

Book Report: Beasts of No Nation

Remember that time I was going to read something that was both not depressing and not about Africa.  Oops.

Beasts of no Nation is a powerful and disgusting view into the lives child soldiers. The author, who was born in the U.S. but spent significant amounts of time with his family in Nigeria, opens the door to a world that anyone reading this book will have trouble imagining. This was Iweala's first novel and it reads painfully true.  War is awful and kids should not have to deal with it at this level.

This book is critically acclaimed and deservedly so. Ever so often there would be an allusion or point of clarity that was so beyond our narrator but always within his voice. Without giving too much away I was pleased that the fictitious ending was both true to history at the same time that it provided a glimmer of hope.

Read this book.

5 out of 5 stars.

Book Report: Little Bee

I would love to read a book about Africa that wasn't so damn depressing.  But hey, that isn't going to happen.

This is my second book with significant African themes I have read as part of my new year's resolution.  Not surprisingly, this book also was kind of a downer. However, it was beautiful. It was powerful. And it was thoroughly fiction.

The last book, Running the Rift, while also fiction, seemed more believable, even the end which was lacking in the believable.  Little Bee was a great story and I blew through it, wanting to know what was going to happen next.  However, it just did not have any bit of believability.  I suppose that is why it was fiction.

It also ended abruptly, but it was a perfect ending.

I was very impressed with the female voice that came from this author.  Chris Cleave wrote a wonderful book with powerful characters with deep flaws. I would recommend everyone to read this book.

4.75 out of 5 stars.

Book Report: Running the Rift

Naomi Benaron's well researched and beautifully written book was impossible to put down.  Following the story of a young boy through school, running, and genocide in his native Rwanda, Running the Rift is a great book.

As a student of international politics and the West's abject failures during the Rwandan Genocide, as well as a runner, I found this book to be a painfully perfect historical fiction.  While you know what happens, and if you don't you need to do some research, you can't stop reading and must know what happens next.  The interpersonal relationships are complex, real, and haunting.  The political realities of a neo-colonial Africa are presented without pretense, even when presented by a white American woman.

Benaron explores the real impact and long term effects of European definitions and divisions on neighbors and families. The nationalism felt by all was overpowered by myth that was eternal even if it was perpetuated by European colonialists.  The powerlessness of moderation over extremists was defeating.  Only the extremist tendencies of Jean Patrick -- which were positive in nature, but extreme all the same -- gave a reader hope for the future.

Benaron's inclusion of a degree of fiction in the form of love blunted the harsh realities of the early 1990s in this small central African nation.  The love story, which honestly didn't seem very believable, enabled me to read this book before bed without nightmares.  However, it was the many stories lines of humanity, which remind you that while reading this horrific history, people tend to be good, even in times of extreme evil.

5 out of 5 stars. 

Maybe it isn't nuance

Maybe it is just because people are really stupid.

My last post was all about the inability of people and leaders to see the shades of gray in any situation. But rather, it may be that people and leaders are simply ignorant.

Ignorant of history. 

Let's start with a little test -- Fill in the blanks:

[The] solution to the current problem is “more prisons and migrant detention camps,” and that BLANK must “prepare more military bases where we can jail all of them without exception.” (Italics mine)

Any guesses? Oh, yeah it is Israel. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said this in an interview where he claimed that Israeli woman are "often" raped by African migrant workers but don't report it because they are worried about the stigma of getting AIDS.

Yup. Israel.

My initial reaction: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Did you miss the reason why Israel was supported by the UN? Did you not get the memo?  Remember that time when Jews had the same issues in Europe?  It is bad and equally historically ignorant when anti-Semites make the Nazi=Zionism connection but when you make it this easy, it is hard for anyone outside of the extreme to support Israel.

Power: Africa, Social Media and Meaningful Change

For those of you who do not choose to earn a liberal arts degree in the International Relations and have not sat through a number of courses that focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, here is the 30 second version of history:

There were thousands of small and large communities, states, and nations that lived, grew and shrank for thousands of years in Sub-Saharan Africa with as many government, political, and religious structures as there were communities, states, and nations. There were times of peace and prosperity and times of strife and war.

Then Europeans showed up. Stuff started changing. We can talk about the raping and pillaging if you want but what is key is that European powers saw the continent as a place for raw materials, from minerals to rubber to slaves. LOTS of things happened over the next five or so generations but here is the take away: Africa was a place for resources and nothing else.

Then "Africans" -- that singular group of people (...) -- started demanding independence and started getting it. Through this process some bad stuff happened, most notably the violent expression of repression tactics employed by the Europeans to control different groups identified as different by the Europeans.

You are now up to date.

Clearly this is unbelievably abridged and painfully flawed but so was that video you told me to watch yesterday.