A great short story has the emotional depth and intensity of a poem and the wholeness and breadth of a novel. Amy Bloom writes great short stories. This is the second book of her short stories that I’ve devoured this week. This one was every bit as deeply moving as the other one.

The first story in this book touches on transsexualism and gender re-assignment surgery, and is written from a mother’s point of view. Her love for her daughter, and the strength of their connection, is evident throughout the story. She notices her daughter’s struggle with being born in a feminine body from as early on as 5 years old, and she starts to save money just in case her daughter might want an operation later on in life to correct the biological mistake. The inherent acceptance and support in that blew me away.

The story then follows through until the surgery years later. It’s beautifully written. Very powerful, and a rare behind-the-scenes snippet of transsexualism, a state of being very often misunderstood to have something to do with homosexuality, when in fact it has nothing to do with sexual preference at all.

This story of a Chinese American mother-daughter relationship is written with immense depth and authenticity. What deeply resonated with me, was the duality with which we daughters often grow up viewing our mothers. On the one hand, we see our first example of womanhood and we can’t help but want to emulate it, worshiping at our mothers’ alter, so to speak. On the other hand, as we grow up, we see behaviour and ways of being that we ‘know’ we’d never do or be. “When I grow up I’ll never do that or say that” is a phrase I’m also quite familiar with.

The daughter in this book, Rose, views her mother with this mixture of irritation and possession, and it is only when her mother’s lucidity in her old age comes into question that Rose starts to pay attention to her mother. Her mother, on the other hand, fears that she is forgetting things, and so writes an autobiography, starting in China when she was a little girl. Old family secrets are revealed, and Ruth finally sees her mother as a person in her own right, and not just an extension of herself.

The story is beautifully and intricately woven, somehow halfway between the exotic and the deeply familiar.

“To imprison a woman is to remove her voice from the world, but many female inmates have been silenced by life long before the transport van carries them from the courthouse to the correctional facility…. because [sexual abuse, incest, domestic violence] cut across the economic divide, women of all means are schooled in silence. Of the eleven contributors to this volume, eight have been battered and nine have been sexually abused, a statistic that reflects the norm for incarcerated women. Their essays, then, are victories against voicelessness—- miracles in print.”

This is a collection of autobiographical writing from 11 female inmates coming out of their workshops with author and teacher Wally Lamb (She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True). Eleven different voices and writing styles, stemming from eleven different lives, with one thing in common: a journey of the self from victim to survivor, from powerless to powerful, from broken to whole. And all done through the healing power of words, both writing their own and hearing the feedback from the group workshop.

Though often quite painful to read at times, the rawness of it is refreshing in it’s exposing of our common humanity. And the foreword by Wally Lamb is one of the best I have ever read. Probably because it shows him to have immense compassion and heart to do this kind of work.

I’ll share his closing:
“There are things [s]he needs to know about prison and prisoners. There are misconceptions to be abandoned, biases to be dropped. There are a heart and mind that need opening. There are many.
we are a paradoxical nation, enormously charitable and stubbornly unforgiving. We have called into existence the prisons we wanted. I am less and less convinced they are the prisons we need.”

Fascinating book. It’s in the genre of feminist science fiction which is itself quite interesting already. In this book it’s as if the author takes various feminist fantasies, from the mild to militant and puts them all together when four alternative selves from very different realities meet.

There’s Janet the explorer from Whileaway where men have been wiped out by a gender specific disease nine hundred years ago; Jeannine from our world as it would have been if WW1 didn’t happen and the Great Depression continued; Joanne from our present male dominated society; and Jael, a warrior and assassin (with a male sex slave) who comes from a place where an actual battle of the sexes is being waged.

The writing style is quite strange in that it’s non-linear and the narrative jumps from one woman to the next, perhaps symbolic of the different voices each of us have as women. At first it’s quite jarring, as it doesn’t appear to flow, but at the end of the book, it all fits together quite nicely. In the minds of these 4 women I was mirrored over and over, a voice given to many experiences I’ve had. What’s also worth noting is that this is not a man-bashing book. It just takes this thing called gender, and throws out some hypotheses worth considering.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

MC: There have been no men on Whileaway for at least eight centuries – I don’t mean no human beings, of course, but no men – and this society, run entirely by women, has naturally attracted a great deal of attention since the appearance last week of it’s representative and it’s 1st ambassador, the lady on my left here. Janet Evason, can you tell us how you think your society on Whileaway will react to the reappearance of men from Earth after an isolation of eight hundred years?

Janet: Nine hundred years. What men?

MC: What men? Surely you expect men from our society to visit Whileaway?

Janet: Why?

MC: For information, trade, cultural contact, surely (laughs). When the plague you spoke of killed the men on Whileaway, weren’t they missed? Weren’t families broken up? Didn’t the whole pattern of life change?

Janet: I suppose people always miss what they’re used to. Yes, they were missed. Even a whole set of words like “he”, “man” and so on – those were banned. Then the 2nd generation use them to be daring, among themselves. And the 3rd generation doesn’t, to be polite and by the 4th, who cares? Who remembers?

MC: Don’t you want men to return to Whileaway Miss Evason?

Janet: Why?

MC: One sex is half a species, Miss Evason. Do you want to banish sex from Whileaway?

Janet: (with complete naturalness) Huh?

MC: Do you want to banish sex? Sex, family, love, erotic attraction – call it what you like – we all know that your people are competent and intelligent individuals, but do you think that’s enough? Surely you have the intellectual knowledge of biology in other species to know what I’m talking about.

Janet: I’m married. I have 2 children. What the devil do you mean?

MC: Well, we know you form what you call marriages, Miss Evason, that you reckon the descent of your children through both partners and that you even have “tribes”. We know these marriages or tribes form very good institutions for the economic support of the children and for some sort of genetic mixing since I confess you’re way beyond us in the biological sciences. But, Miss Evason, I am not talking about economic institutions or even affectionate ones. Of course the mothers of Whileaway love their children; nobody doubts that. And of course they have affection for each other, nobody doubts that, either. But there is more, much, much more – I am talking about sexual love.

Janet: Oh! You mean copulation.

MC: Yes.

Janet: And you say we don’t have that?

MC: Yes.

Janet: How foolish of you. Of course we do.

MC: Ah?

Janet: With each other. Allow me to explain…

This is a stand-up routine in book form. While there are funny parts, because she certainly is funny, I didn’t think that it worked in this format. Other Ellen lovers may disagree. The thing that attracts me to Ellen isn’t just her funniness, and I was hoping that I would get more of that other stuff. I suppose it was silly of me to expect her to be serious, when she’s so obviously not.
So if you enjoy her talk show, and her humour, then read this. But know, that there’s nothing more here than that.

This is about Black pride, more specifically African-Black pride. It started out as a series of articles that got a lot of publicity and following, so it got turned into a book. And as the title suggests, it’s about the Black professional, or being a Black professional in a white world. I loved it. Ever since I read “I write what I like” by Steve Biko, the South African famous for his quote “Black is Beautiful” and his writing on Black Consciousness, I thought that too little emphasis is put on adressing the mindsets of the oppressed.

There are a growing number of Black professionals in South Africa. More so than in any other country in the world. We’re everywhere, and we’re definitely changing the status quo. Biko said, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” and this book is a welcome contemporary addition to literature aimed at awakening Black people to our power and our right to live it in our society.

The articles range from supporting Black businesses and service providers, like Black doctors and accountants, to xenophobia. There’s a website where you can view the weekly articles, and even susbcribe and join in on the discussions.
http://www.omandingo.co.za/

“O’Mandingo! is a love phenomenon.  It is you and I together intertwined in a connectedness that surpasses greed, hate, bigotry and all things negative. 

O’Mandingo! is a family dispersed finally come together to supper together and contribute positively to humankind. O’Mandingo! is Africa united to unite the world.

 O’Mandingo! is a blacks for blacks attempt to give black people back their dignity, their love of self, their pride, their humanity and their zest for life. Everything you will see on this sight is geared towards that single goal which is to make the world a better place by giving back what the coloniser, the racist, the bigot and the hater takes away from humanity on a day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute basis.

 O’Mandingo! is gourmet food for the soul.”

This book of short stories was exquisite. Truly a gem. Something that I want to savour and dip into every now and then. There’s a delicacy about it. A sense of softness and intimacy. With no judgments.

In the first story we hear about a woman at her mom’s funeral, who comes to finally deal with her discovery as a teenager that her parents had an unconventional relationship. Her mom had a lover, with her father’s blessing. Not only that, the three of them were very close, and when her mom dies, the two men support each other in the loss of someone they both loved. The daughter herself is not as open-minded and struggles to understand it, while also sensing that this rigid adherence she has to convention doesn’t always serve her in her own relationships.

For me, that story really resonated. I have often thought, and experienced, that love and life don’t always fit in the neat little compartments that my mind sometimes sets out for it; that for my own happiness, I need to blend and blur the edges now and then. The story also speaks to me about not judging other people. That they live their lives, and I live mine; if something works for them, then I’ll share in their happiness and peace, instead of allowing my personal judgments to separate us. Especially if it’s loved ones. Or maybe even more if it’s not. Lastly, I can relate to the story somewhat because I wonder sometimes about the notion that there is one person out there for me. Yes, I might get a close fit, but as complex and multi-layered as I am, I want a relationship that is freeing, and not encumbered. Even though I don’t think I’m going to rush headlong into a polyamorous relationship, I can understand the motivation for it quite well.

Each of the other stories in this book are as exposing of us in our humanity. It’s subtle, and honest. Sometimes quietly painful, as life often is.

What made me pick this up was the word ‘paranormal’ next to the word ‘romance’. I thought that could be interesting.

I only enjoyed the story about the werewolf. It was the least cheesy and didn’t have hard to believe kind of stuff with a whole new language and different planets and time travel and what have you.

I thought that some of the stories in here didn’t fit into the paranormal category, but rather science fiction or fantasy instead. That kind of annoyed me.

According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness.

Faubourg Saint-Peres
Encyclopedia of the Fantastic (1953)

This book, was another journey with Coelho into his world of the spirit, and this time the real essence of love. What it means to love someone, and yourself… And again, the main character appears to be him, with the same background and his life experiences, although I’m not sure that this particular thing ever happened to him. The narrator/protagonist in the story is never named.
The book also addresses happiness and wealth. He talks about what it’s like to be a celebrity, more importantly, what it’s like to be a human being while being a celebrity.

It’s almost impossible for me to write a review on this book. It seems like the reading of it went by in flash, and by the last page I wasn’t ready for it to end. It’s easy to read this book and be overwhelmed, be scared that you’re missing something, because just about everybody makes a big deal about this book. So I found myself reading it and being very conscious of every single word. That’s probably why I noticed that the word ‘solitude’ is used alot, almost on every page or second page.

The novel explores themes of magical realism, fate, solitude, and time. In a period of one hundred years it tells the story of the rise and fall of the Buendias family, a fictional family but told against the backdrop of the history of Columbia during that time. What may be worth nothing is that it’s a tale told about and ‘by’ the ‘losers. It’s often said that History is written by the winners. This story is different in that way. The author gave a voice to people who may not otherwise have ever been heard.

That’s the best I can do here. Try to make sense of it. But I would definitely recommend it. It’s the kind of book that’s perfect for a bookclub though, so that it can be discussed. It was in my bookclub about two years ago, but this is the first time I’m getting to it. Now I wish I had read it then, so that I could have heard what the others had to say on it.