Tar Baby's Great Expectations

Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby explores her major literary themes: race, gender, and social class.  So, it is a big novel, loaded with big ideas, but they only work in a novel if they are deployed correctly in the small moments of character interactions,  narrative thrust, and language usage.

Morrison accomplishes this, certainly, but certain parts lag.  The interactions between Son and Jade are too protracted.  Margaret Street, despite her terrible deeds, is not drawn nearly deep enough.  Her sin arrives without much warning. The novel could have concluded about fifty pages before it actually did; Morrison tells us too much, and ends on an odd note.

We come to Morrison’s work with the expectation of slipping into a finely made suit.  Tar Baby fits well enough, but its shirttails are hanging out.

Sexual Violence Against Woman During the Holocaust

Editors Hedgepeth and Saidel’s Sexual Violence Against Woman During the Holocaust, is by no means an easy book to read, but it is vitally important to the study of the Shoah.  

As the authors in the collection explain, the study of gender violence in the Holocaust was never explored until the 1980s.  It was deemed not worthy of study; or more darkly, women who were victims of sexual assault were blamed for the crimes committed against them.  Under such a spurious shadow, women did not share their experiences.

Also, Nazi racial laws did not permit sexual relationships of any sort between Germans and other “races,” particularly Jews.  Historians took this law at face value, believing, contrary to evidence, that sex crimes against Jewish women by Germans were rare. This volume shows us that they were not.  

Unfortunately, as in all wars, women were sexually assaulted during the chaos of the Holocaust. The dehumanizing environment of the Shoah was the perfect atmosphere for men to commit sex crimes against women.  This study shines a light on these crimes, to the eternal benefit of the victims, and so we can learn the truth.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert is certainly an interesting and important book, but it reads like a prelude to her masterful “The Sixth Extinction.”

Either way, it is an accomplished work, about an important topic. 

Sadly it is probably already too late to stop our climate’s path to radical change.  We now need books to show us how technology and policy can help us live in this world we have created.

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell, is a very basic history of Hawaii.  If you want to get a flavor of Hawaiian history without delving into longer, more dense tomes, then this is the book for you.

That said, Vowell has a weird and goofy narrative voice.  This voice gets a bit less daft as the book progresses, but never really goes away; it makes you feel less than intelligent.

Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust

Authors Michael J. Bazyler  and Frank M. Tuerkheimer explore how justice was meted in the aftermath of one of the most heinous crimes in human history, the Holocaust.  Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust, as the name suggests, examines some of the lesser known, if not downright forgotten, attempts to bring the criminals involved in the Holocaust to justice.

I have always been of the opinion that too little was done to redress the Holocaust.  This books sheds some like on this issue, by providing examples how well-meaning individuals, across countries, ethnic groups and institutions, made a valiant effort to punish genocidal criminals.

Ultimately, the Cold War caught up to the Holocaust.  A strong West Germany as a bulwark against communism was more important than justice.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention purports to look at Malcolm the man, and not the legend that developed around him in the years following his death.  Much of this legend was fostered by the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Spike Lee’s movie.  Here, Manning presents the many sides of this complicated man.

People were angry when this book was first released.  I find that odd but expected.  When historians begin to work on a legendary figure, elements of the legend or myth are shown to be false, inflated, or at least not completely based on truth.  Why would Malcolm X be different?  He is still one of the most influential and important Americans of the twentieth century.  History or legend will do not change this unalterable fact.

Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region

Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region, by Masha Gessen, is part of the fantastic Jewish Encounters Series. 

The Soviet Union flirted with the notion of creating a Jewish SSR in Soviet Asia.  The results were disastrous; many people died – as often happens in Russian and Soviet history as that benighted people and land, in their attempt to better themselves, let loose forces of destruction and death.

Gessen’s treatment really get to the bone of this issue.  He, and then later she, has lived the life of the literal wandering Jew, never really finding a home .  And this book is about the illusive Jewish home – a treatment no longer really happens after World War Two.  American and Israel are the premier Jewish homelands, seemingly safe and secure.  But if the history of both forced and voluntary Jewish migration is any indication, sadly, this may not always be the case.

Bialik: The Meta-Poet

Hayim Nahman Bialik: Poet of Hebrew by Avner Holtzman is a thoughtful and humane treatment of Bialik, considered the Hebrew “national” poet for most of his life, and well after his death (before the State of Israel was formed).

Bialik was similar in background to many Zionists at the turn of the century.  He had a deep religious background as a boy, and he both used and molded this to create a  new secular Jewish, poetic voice.  He did most of his best work in the diaspora (Odessa, in particular).  He only lived in Palestine for the last ten years of his life.

There were other poets at the time, of course, but he was crowned the king.  Part of his appeal, but not the only part, seems that he fit the bill at that moment.  Modern Hebrew required a meta-narrative, and helped write that story. 

Now, the idea of a national poet in Israel is an outdated notion.  The European Jews who controlled Palestine/Israel must now share the stage with Jews from all over the world.  Fractures and fissures rule the day, and not national artistic unity.