Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmaar

"I don't know how to explain to her that I am cornered by memories, caged in my recollection. I feel persecuted by the things I remember and by what my mind chooses to hide from me.~from Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar

Everyone wants a story. A narrative with meaning. The doctors. The officials. The contact at a magazine who publishes her writing. 

She is recognized as 'other', Arab, Muslim. She is a refugee in England. People fear her. Or, they want to know things she holds close, the people lost and the atrocities of war and her escape across Europe. The experiences that left her enveloped by silence.

Trauma took her voice. Communicating only in the written word, she becomes "The Voiceless." 

The only reasonable response was to fill myself up with silence.~from Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar

She looks out the windows of her apartment and observes the occupants of the other apartments. She knows their secrets. But she keeps apart until a horrendous crime evokes a response that frees her.

Layla AlAmmar's novel Silence is a Sense brilliantly delves into the soul of a woman who has lost everything, first by the war that destroyed her world, and then by her harrowing flight across borders, only to find there is no safe harbor even in freedom. 

Edgar Allan Poe's fable Silence informs the work, the narrator committing it to memory. "My heart pounds to the rhythm of his cadence," she thinks as she recites it in her head.

Front-piece in Vol. Seven of the 1904 Commemorative Edition of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

I picked up my grandfather's set of Poe to read the fable and noted images that appear in AlAmmar's novel. Poe describes a place where giant water lilies shriek in a yellow river, and forests quake in windless skies, and a crimson moon lights the view. A being in desolation is subjected to beating rain and roaring hippopotami, then by a profound silence by the Demon who tells the tale. The man hurriedly flees in terror.

The fable speaks to the narrator who has also been terrorized and left in silence.

For AlAmmar's protagonist, silence is the only sane reaction to atrocity. We don't need detailed descriptions of what she endured, for her reaction tells us all we need to know. 

What do we see when we look at refugees, immigrants, people who look different from us, or who worship differently from us? Do we think of their legacy of losses? 

Our immigrant ancestors kept their stories quiet, they did not tell us of the death camps or the burned villages, the rape and torture when they were powerless. We wrap these things in silence.

We demand stories and hope to hear pretty tales, happy endings. 

At the end of the novel, our heroine speaks her name, has found her voice. There is hope of healing. 

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Silence Is a Sense

by Layla AlAmmar
Algonquin Books
Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 9781643750262
hard cover $25.95 (USD)

from the publisher

“Lyrical, moving, and revealing."~Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring

A transfixing and beautifully rendered novel about a refugee’s escape from civil war—and the healing power of community.

A young woman sits in her apartment, watching the small daily dramas of her neighbors across the way. She is an outsider, a mute voyeur, safe behind her windows, and she sees it all—the sex, the fights, the happy and unhappy families. Journeying from her war-torn Syrian homeland to this unnamed British city has traumatized her into silence, and her only connection to the world is the column she writes for a magazine under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” where she tries to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it—or revealing anything about herself.

Gradually, though, the boundaries of her world expand. She ventures to the corner store, to a bookstore and a laundromat, and to a gathering at a nearby mosque. And it isn’t long before she finds herself involved in her neighbors’ lives. When an anti-Muslim hate crime rattles the neighborhood, she has to make a choice: Will she remain a voiceless observer, or become an active participant in a community that, despite her best efforts, is quickly becoming her own?

Layla AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti-American writer and brilliant student of Arab literature, delivers here a complex and fluid book about memory, revolution, loss, and safety. Most of all, Silence is a Sense reminds us just how fundamental human connection is to survival.

About the Author

Growing up in Kuwait, I often – some might say too often – found solace in the pages of a book; and if it was a really good book, it would soon become more of a best friend—lovingly read over and over again.

I also began writing at a very early age, from poems to articles to bits and pieces of stories, and I always had this vague, ethereal idea of being published one day.

I completed an MSc in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2014 and soon after completed my first full-length novel. I began a PhD on the intersection of Arab women’s fiction and literary trauma theory in 2019.

I’ve had short stories published by the Evening Standard, Quail Bell Magazine, Aesthetica Magazine, the St Andrews University Prose Journal, and in the collection Underground: Tales for London (Borough Press 2018). My  story "The Lagoon" was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award 2014. I was British Council International Writer in Residence at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival in 2018.

My debut novel, THE PACT WE MADE, which deals with the lives of young women in Kuwait, was published by Borough Press in March 2019. My second novel, SILENCE IS A SENSE, was published in Spring 2021 (Borough/Algonquin).

The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan

 

"We deserve our secrets."~from The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan

Secrets. Everyone has them. We keep secrets out of shame, out of fear, to protect loved ones, to protect ourselves. 

Keeping a secret can destroy. Guilt that alienates from others and eats at your soul. Suspicion that wracks relationships. 

Some families balance on the edge of a well-hidden secret, and when it is outed, life tumbles like dominoes.

Hala Alyan's family saga The Arsonists' City is a big book, with a big family, following forty years of their lives. I made a family tree to keep track of them! Their journey crosses the ocean, from Beirut and Damascus to America. It is a journey not only across time and space, it delves into the depths of love and grief.

I became obsessed with the novel. Foreshadowing brought me to guess some secrets and conflicts to come. I didn't know if the story was coming to a car wreck or redemption, resolution and growth or despair and endings.

At the heart of the story is Mazna, the beautiful Syrian who aspires to be an actress. When Idris sees her on stage, he is smitten and pursues her, taking her on day trips to his hometown of Beirut. When Mazna meets his dearest friend Zakaria, a poor boy from the Palestinian camps, she is drawn to him.

Forty years later, after his father's death, Idris is determined to sell his ancestral Beirut home, setting off a firestorm in the family. The family gathers one last time, Idris and Mazna, their three children, and a daughter-in-law. 

Idris, not handsome enough, not sure enough, had pursued the beautiful Mazna, a poor Damascan girl with powerful stage presence in the local theater. She dreams of going to London and then American to become the next Ava Gardner or Vivian Leigh. She poses as a friend to his sister Sara. Their marriage was rushed; he caught her "when she was broken." Idris gained a residency in America. They begin in poverty until he established a career as a cardiologist surgeon.

The eldest child, Ava, lives in New York City, married to the American Nate. She comes with their three children, Nate claiming a work trip keeps him from joining her. 

Next is Mimi, living in Texas with his American fiance Harper. Although he runs a successful restaurant, he is frustrated over his tottering music career and aging out of being 'cool'.

And there is Naj, the youngest, who stayed in Beirut. She is a wildly successful violinist, a media sensation, but self-destructive, angry and heartbroken.

Gathering mementos for the patriarchs memorial service, the children discover hints to their parent's secret past. 

The Beirut home takes its place as an important 'character', more than a backdrop to the scenes that play out there. It is a link, a reminder, a legacy. When one of the cherished almond trees is nearly cut down, it is a symbol of the family's frailty. But the other trees still remain, the house still stands.

The family drama is universal in its appeal and message. It is the setting and background that allows American readers like me to see through another lens. "We all come from tribes," Zakaria tells Mazna early on. "People don't need much of a reason to hate each other."

And that tribal hate manifests itself in the act that sends Idris and Mazna spiraling into a future neither expected.

Checkpoints, sectarian violence, the continual war, colors the scenes in Lebanon. 

"The war continued to chug along like a faithful engine, destroying the city. It's like background nose, Sara said once." ~From The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan

Once in America, the family discovers they are 'brown', other, victims of mockery and hate. "Neighborhoods are arranged by skin. Jobs, schools." Mazna learns. The beautiful Mazna can not find acting roles, passed by because of her accent, her otherness. She blames Idris for ruining all her chances. 

But it is a small mercy, how time distills what we know, how it fictionalizes it.~ from The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan

The characters struggle with their pasts, their relationships, their guilt and their desires. But over the summer in the ancestral home, they find truth and new understanding, family ties are ultimately strengthened. 

I received an ARC from the publisher through Amazon Vine. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Arsonsits' City 
by Hala Alyan
HMH
Publication Date: March 3, 2021 
ISBN-13/EAN: 9780358125099
ISBN-10: 035812509X
Price: $14.99 ebook, $26.99 hardcover

from the publisher

“The Arsonists’ City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan’s hands, one family’s tale becomes the story of a nation—Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States. It’s the kind of book we are lucky to have.”—Rumaan Alam

A rich family story, a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East, and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home

The Nasr family is spread across the globe—Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut—a constant touchstone—and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell.

The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets—lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame—that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together.

In a novel teeming with wisdom, warmth, and characters born of remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us again that “fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us” (NPR).

About the author 

HALA ALYAN is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, as well as the forthcoming novel The Arsonists' City and four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by TheNew Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, LitHub,the New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, where she works as a clinical psychologist.

 

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Leaving is a kind of death~ from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

In exquisite writing and storytelling,  Infinite Country explores love that transcends borders and separation, the bifurcated identity of those who have left their homeland for new countries, the longing and sorrow of family separation, and the myth of American Dream. 

Award-winning author Patricia Engel's moving story elicits compassion and an awareness that there are no safe havens except in a family's love. 

People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics--the elements most likely to ruin a life. They're wrong. It's love.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

In Bogota, during a violent time in Columbia, teenagers Mauro and Elena fall in love. They have a child and move to the United States hoping for a better life. When Mauro is arrested and deported, Elena decides to stay in America with Talia, born in Colombia, and their American born son and daughter. When she finds she cannot work with the newborn girl, she sends Talia back to her mother and husband to raise in Bogota. Years pass with the family separated, growing apart.

What was it about this country that kept us hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring along there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

The American children feel alien in an America that fears and diminishes Latinos, living in overcrowded apartments filled with illegals, targeted with hate, their mother abused by bosses. They do not see America as a haven and envy their sister in Columbia, living with their father.

But every nation in the Americas had a hidden history of internal violence. It just wore different masks, carried different weapons, and justified itself with different stories.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Talia, loves her grandmother and father, but longs to know her mother and siblings. Mauro tells Talia the stories and myths of their Andean people about the jaguar, the boa constrictor, the condor, the creation story he was told, including the lesson "we're all migrants here on earth."

When Talia sees a vicious act and reacts rashly, she is arrested and, only age fifteen, is sent to a school in the mountains for six months. She escapes and must find her way across the mountains to her father and an airline ticket to her birthplace--America.

This is a story with a happy ending. The journey is fraught and long and difficult. Each person must forgive and hold on to the one place they belong: in each other's loving arms.

That night I thought about how love comes paired with failure, apologies for deficiencies. The only remedy is compassion.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

I love this novel. The gorgeous writing, the way tears welled when I felt the loneliness of people losing connection without losing their love and commitment. The beauty of the Colombian land. 

One night Elena dreamed they were back on the roof of Perla's house. She stood with Maruo and the three children under the aluminium sky, gossamer clouds pushed to the mountain crests, the church of Monserrate like a merengue atop its peak. In her dreams, they'd never left their land. ~ from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Americans must face the depicted reality of our prejudice and laws, the way we dehumanize immigrants. How we are not better than countries we consider less free. 

This is a small book in size, but large in heart and vision, a stunning gem of a read.

I received a book from the publisher through a  Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Infinite Country

by Patricia Engel

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster 

Publication March 2, 2021
ISBN13: 9781982159467

from the publisher

“A knockout of a novel…we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021’s best.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 from Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, GMA, New York Post, Ms. Magazine, The Millions, Electric Literature, LitHub, AARP, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, She Reads, Alma, and more.

I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.

Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north.

How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since.

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America?

Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.

about the author 

Patricia Engel is the author of The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, New York Times Notable Book, and winner of Colombia’s national book award, the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia teaches creative writing at the University of Miami. 

Irving Berlin, New York Genius by James Kaplan

I sped through this delightful biography of Irving Berlin in two days.  From the Preface to the end, I was totally captivated.

James Kaplan presents the iconic composer's nine-decade contribution to the Great American Songbook through Berlin's work, personal experience, and as a Jewish immigrant. It's a rags-to-riches story based on Berlin's intense work ethic, but he was also helped along by friends and peers.

Everyone knows Berlin's God Bless America. It was written during WWI but was set aside until WWII when Berlin dusted it off and finally shared it with the world.  It was the right song at the right time. White Christmas is another well-beloved Berlin song that matched its time, resonating with WWII troops across the world.

Berlin was criticized for his patriotic song--because he was an immigrant. The Beilin/Baline family fled Russia's pogroms to settle in New York City. Berlin's father was a cantor, usually unemployed. After his father's early death, Berlin left home to fend for himself. The story of Berlin's years on the street, selling newspapers and busking Tin Pan Alley songs, exemplifies his life-long work ethic, pluck, and luck. 

Unable to read or write music, Berlin worked with a series of pianists who brought what Berlin heard in his head to the page.

As a Jew, Berlin encountered the rampant anti-Semitism leading up to WWII.

Berlin created a Christmas song without religion and his Easter Parade brought a secular vision of the most important Christian celebration. 

I was familiar with many of Berlin's hits because I have been a sheet music collector for forty years. 

1909

I wrote about My Wife's Gone to the Country Hurrah! Hurrah!; read it here.

1911

Berlin revived Rag Time with his megahit march Alexander's Ragtime Band which George Gershwin considered "the first real American musical work."

1911

1912

1913

WWI found Berlin conscripted, supporting the troops with a traveling revue, Yip Yip Yaphank. Actual soldiers performed. His song Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning resonated with millions. I wrote about it previously here.

1918

The musical revue was Berlin's favorite venue to write for.

1920

Berlin opened the Music Box Theatre to present his revues.

1921

1928

1928

Berlin wrote for Hollywood, including the music for the Marx Brother's first film The Cocoanuts. 

1929

1930

1937

During WWII, Berlin revived his revue Yip Yip Yaphank, taking the show on the road to soldiers at both fronts of the war. A movie version of the revue was released as This Is The Army.

During the war, other songwriters had successful shows on Broadway. Berlin chose to support the troops over advancing his career. He was exhausted and personally broke by war's end, struggling to adapt to peacetime.

1942

Berlin came to write Annie Get Your Gun after the death of Jerome Kern and he was offered to replace his dear friend.

Berlin was exhausted from taking his revue across the world. He was worried about writing for a Western, female character. It was his biggest challenge and he excelled, creating his best work.

1946

Berlin did the remarkable: he asked for a lower share of royalty percentage and that the show's producers Rodgers and Hammerstein and librettists Dorothy and Herbert Fields share equal billing with him on all publicity and sheet music. 

His later work never met with the same success.

1950

Berlin lived to be 101 years old.

1952

Berlin's friends and peers populate the biography as well, including Harold Arlen, a fellow wordsmith and cantor's son. (Read my review of Arlen's biography, The Man Who Got Away by Walter Rimler, here.)

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

All sheet music pictured is from my personal collection.

Kaplan's book is a part of Yale University Press's series on Jewish Lives.

Irving Berlin: American Genius
by James Kaplan
Yale University Press
Publication November 5, 2019
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 9780300180480

from the publisher:

Irving Berlin (1888–1989) has been called—by George Gershwin, among others—the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. “Berlin has no place in American music,” legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; “he is American music.” In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “God Bless America,” and “White Christmas.” From ragtime to the rock era, Berlin’s work has endured in the very fiber of American national identity.

Exploring the interplay of Berlin’s life with the life of New York City, noted biographer James Kaplan offers a visceral narrative of Berlin as self‑made man and witty, wily, tough Jewish immigrant. This fast‑paced, musically opinionated biography uncovers Berlin’s unique brilliance as a composer of music and lyrics. Masterfully written and psychologically penetrating, Kaplan’s book underscores Berlin’s continued relevance in American popular culture.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

I purchased Angie Kim's Miracle Creek at Barnes and Nobel's #Blowout sale. I had heard so much good buzz about the novel! I was not disappointed.

A Korean immigrant family endeavors to the American dream when a tragic accident causes the death of a woman and a child and disfigures several others. Now, the party guilty of causing the accident is being sought in court.

Not only is the novel a well-paced and well-written courtroom drama, and the characters unique and vivid, the slow revelation of the truth makes for page-turning, engrossed reading.

Timely and timeless issues are central: the immigrant experience, assimilating and reaching for the American dream; the awesome burden of care and love carried by parents of special needs Autistic children; how infertility strains a marriage; the secrets we keep; how frustration and anger and guilt we feel drive us to lash out in actions contrary to our nature.

"...that was the thing about lying: you had to throw in occasional kernels of shameful truths to serve as decoys for the things you really needed to hide."~from Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Everyone is lying. They lie to hide their sins, they lie to protect their loved ones, they lie out of fear, and they lie to themselves.

Everyone is guilty, contributing to the series of events that caused death and permanent bodily harm and psychological damage.

Some are more guilty than others. Someone lit the fire.

Punishments are not in balance with guilt. The innocent of crimes hold the personal guilt of falling short of their high standards of perfection and inflect their own penalty. A horrible crime goes unpunished.

Miracle Creek is a fantastic read and an amazing debut novel. I will eagerly await more from Kim.

I will recommend this to my book club!

Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy

The connected stories in Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy create an intergenerational history of an Indian Tamil family from the first generation who left India to work in the tea estates of Sri Lanka to children born in America. 

The stories are heart-breaking, some addressing the discrimination and murder of Tamils in Sri Lanka while others explore the immigrant experience. I am haunted by these characters with their complicated back stories. The storytelling is mesmerizing. Sometimes I felt a bit lost, as if a visitor in a foreign land whose culture and reality jolt me outside my comfortable reality. 

America has its horrors and violence, but for someone like myself who has been comfortably sheltered, it is an awakening to read lines like "They all loved people who were born to disappear," or "Refugees can't be picky," or "the real difference between India and American...there is no rule of law in India. You need to bribe everyone to live a normal life." 

Imagine an engineer who in America must work as a butcher. A Tamil professor in Sri Lanka who receives death threats and whose son disappears. An old man who returns home to find his entire village missing and replaced by a hole in the ground. A Tamil man memorizes books because he saw the burning of books in his language.  

The family patriarch in Half Gods is descended from Tamils who came to Ceylon harvest tea. The family experienced the end of colonization when the British left Ceylon, reborn as Sri Lanka. They suffered during the Anti-Tamil riots when their village was destroyed, fled to a refugee camp, and finally immigrated to America.

Sri Lanka, once called Ceylon, is an island first inhabited in the stone age. Beginning in the 16th c European countries colonized the island--first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British. They built rubber, coffee, and coconut plantations. When the coffee plants were decimated by a fungus, tea was grown, and to harvest the tea, Tamils from southern India were brought over as indentured servants.

When the country gained its independence, the Sinhalese were the dominant group, making their language the official one. The Tamils were marginalized and tried to gain a political voice. Anti-Tamil riots arose; Tamils were killed and others left the country. Out of this conflict, the Liberation Tamil Tigers were birthed and civil war ensued. 

Nearly 300,000 displaced persons were housed in government camps and 100,000 people died during the war. Sri Lanka ranks as having the second highest number of disappearances in the world.

I mistakenly thought the book was a collection of stories, which I usually read one at a time. After a few stories, I realized the interconnectedness and so suggest reading as you would a novel.

Akil Kumarasamy received her MFA from the University of Michigan. This is her first book.

I received a complimentary ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Half Gods
by Akil Kumarasamy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date 05 Jun 2018 
ISBN 9780374167677
PRICE $25.00 (USD)

from the publisher:

A startlingly beautiful debut, Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers. Following the fractured origins and destinies of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. 

These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son. 

By turns heartbreaking and fiercely inventive, Half Gods reveals with sharp clarity the ways that parents, children, and friends act as unknowing mirrors to each other, revealing in their all-too human weaknesses, hopes, and sorrows a connection to the divine.

Sharon Bala's Debut Novel, The Boat People, Explores The Refugee Experience

We may have all come on different ships but we're in the same boat now. Martin Luther King Jr.

Who leaves their home unless under duress? The place of one's nativity, where one's ancestors are buried, the house that contains so many memories are not given up lightly. To be a refugee, an immigrant, means to be cast off freewheeling into the unknown mists of the future, without mooring or a known destination.

The Boat People is Sharon Bala's debut novel.

Mahindan fled Sri Lanka with his son Sellian when there was nothing left. The Tamil Tigers had been fighting for their rights under the Singhs for years, turning both the willing and the unwilling into terrorists. The United Nations had pulled out and there was no protection. His wife dead, his village bombed, Mahindan and his son join the stream of refugees, ending up in a camp. Their suffering becomes unendurable, the dream of Canada enchanting. Mahindan raises money for a boat out of Sri Lanka.

Arriving in Canada, the 503 refugees are secluded in holding places, women and children in one place and the men in another, families broken apart. Mahindan is on trial to prove he is not a Tiger terrorist, while his son goes to a foster home and becomes Westernized.

Priya represents the legal counsel for the refugees, sidelined into the work because of her Tamil heritage. She is resentful as she wanted experience in corporate law, and because she identifies as Canadian whose grandparents happen to be from Sri Lanka. The refugee work is exhausting and disturbing. Then her uncle reveals the truth of her family's past.

Grace is a temporary government assigned lawyer. Canada is immersed in xenophobia and fear. All Tamils are considered possible terrorists and she is to do everything possible to find reasons to deport the boat people back to Sri Lanka.

Grace's grandmother in suffering the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, which brings old memories to the forefront. An Issei, first generation Japanese Canadian, she becomes an activist for the Japanese Canadians who were interred during WWII, losing their homes and businesses which now have become valuable real estate. She warns Grace that she is participating in the same kind of racism experienced the Japanese--everyone in a group considered an enemy until proven innocent.

I learned about Canada's parallels to American fear of foreigners as potential terrorists and about the history of Sri Lanka in modern times.

The Boat People is similar to other books I have recently read, such as This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey, warning about the implication of current events through the lens of our admitted past mistakes, and involving a courtroom setting.

Sharon Bala's book is interesting and thoughtful, a fine addition to recent novels addressing timely issues in immigration, post 9-11 fears, and learning how to connect our past mistakes to our current policy. Read an excerpt at http://sharonbala.com/excerpt

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Boat People: A Novel
by Sharon Bala
Doubleday Books
Pub Date 09 Jan 2018
ISBN: 9780385542296
PRICE $26.95

Mini-Reviews: Hot-Button Topics: Freedom to Marry, Immigrants, and Walls

Wild Mountain is set in the mountains of Vermont, a place of uncivilized natural beauty, where generations have come to commune with nature and the gods (and goddesses). The town of Wild Mountain is comprised of folk with deep roots and newcomers attracted to living simply in a beautiful place.

It is the story of Mona Duval's several battles which encompass her personal growth. She must let go of the past and her abusive ex-husband to embrace the future and the possibility of love. She stands loyal to old friends besieged by prejudice.

Mona's story is well developed with enough tension and conflict to keep readers of romance and women's fiction interested. The political issues the town struggles with, including the rebuilding of a historical covered bridge and the Freedom to Marry bill, highlights the division in the town, as well as in our world.

I was disappointed that the expected climax of the town meeting and voting on these issues takes place off camera. The issues drop out of center stage. Instead, the story line sifts focus to a (previously) minor character's death. The ending consists of an idealized gathering around an ancient stone circle on the solstice, with Wiccan and Christians celebrating together.

Learn more about the background of the book at  https://nancyhayeskilgore.wordpress.com

Wild Mountain
by Nancy Hayes Kilgore
Green Mountain Press
Publication Oct. 1, 2017
$19.95

*****

"The end of the world can be cozy at times."

After hearing so much about Exit West by Moshin Hamid I borrowed it from the library and fit it into my heavy reading schedule. It is a wonderful book, fiction about the refugee/immigrant experience.

Nadia and Saeed have just met and would, perhaps, fall in love and marry and have a normal life. Except militant radicals take over their unnamed city. They turn to each other in the crisis. When all normalcy is ended, they seek the 'doors' that have popped up allowing escape to other places.

"... that is the way of thing, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind."

As they travel through doors to other places they encounter all the immigrant experiences, from refugee camps to nativist mobs. The stress pulls the couple apart. 

"and when she went out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same house our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time."

The magical realism of the doors allows an exploration of the totality of why people leave their homeland and the experience of being a stranger in strange lands. It is a sad but tale, beautifully told.

Find a Reading Guide at
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549017/exit-west-by-mohsin-hamid/9780735212176/readers-guide/

Hardcover | $26.00
Published by Riverhead Books
ISBN 9780735212176

*****

In future days when America is divided into walled enclaves, those inside the walls are addicted to tablets and enjoy a sheltered life, while those outside live in a world of deadly ticks. Between the two is the Salt Line, a burnt out wasteland and immense garbage dump. Thrill seekers risk their lives to see the natural beauty on the other side of the walls.

The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones follows a tour group of the rich and the famous going over the Salt Line. They think they are on a three week experience of sights few inside the walls ever see. Yes, there are those gruesome ticks and the horrible death they carry. Protective suits offer some comfort, and there are tools to kill the ticks through extraction and burning eggs out of the tissue, leaving circular battle scars.

The tour group is taken hostage by an outer-zone insurgency group based in Ruby City, a functioning village populated mostly by people of Cherokee descent. The community is without fear of the ticks, thanks to The Salt. The hostages create alliances and discover what the out-zoners want from them.

I was hooked by the time the tour group reached the Salt Line. I enjoyed the characters with their various backgrounds and relationships: a gangster businessman with political ambitions and his wife who will do anything for their sons, a scrappy nobody with a big heart, and a entrepreneur looking for meaning.

Ruby City is peopled with characters who seem both admirable and well meaning, but are also willing to do whatever it takes to protect themselves.

There is a touch of mystery, intriguing motivations, and riveting action. And the whole issue of the Wall, who gets to be on the inside and who is left outside to fend for themselves in a lawless wilderness, can invite thoughtful consideration of the many walls being built today.

The ending is a bit weak, but only because it is obviously a set-up for a second volume. I along with many others will look forward to following these characters on their journeys.

You can find a Book Club Kit at  https://randomhouse.app.box.com/s/yavenpwz7lc34r3fmptx34pkn630icfw

I received a free ebook through First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Life is a Journey by Betty Chan Tells Her Family Story

Life is a Journey by Betty Chan

I met Betty Chan at the Threads quilt show at the Troy Historical Center earlier this month. Her quilt Life is a Journey was on exhibit. The quilt tells the story of her parents' immigration to America. The back of the quilt is her genealogy.

I asked if we could met so I could learn more about her quilt and the story it told. She kindly lent me a book she self-published which explains the images on her quilt and details her family tree and history.

Betty's parents, going to America

Betty Eng's parents

Genealogy on the back of Betty Chan's quilts Life is a Journey

Life is a Journey tells the story of her parents Din Lee Eng and You Ying Eng, born in Toishan, Canton, China. Betty started the quilt in 2012 while taking a Story Book workshop with Mary Lou Weidman. In 2013 she returned to the workshop to continue working on the quilt. The quilt was finished in 2014. (Learn about Weidman's Story Book Workshop at https://www.marylouquiltdesigns.com/class-detail.php?ID=12)

The central figures represent Betty’s parents.

Betty's great-grandparents who first came to America

Pictured on her quilt to the left of her parents is a Water Buffalo surrounded by Bamboo to represent her parent’s village. 

Betty traveled to China to see her ancestral home, symbolized by the water buffalo and bamboo.

Betty's ancestral village in China

Three red fish represent the three generations which came to America, starting with her great-grandfather on the bottom. He was one of the Chinese laborers who built on the Transcontinental Railroad. He hoped to find wealth in house building, and was well liked by his employer, a prominent citizen near Seattle, WA. His investment in a hotel brought in regular money. He returned to China with gifts, and his fish holds a coin representing wealth.

Red fish with a coin, lower left, is Betty's great grandfather who brought home
wealth. Two more fish represent her grandfather and father who later came to the USA.

The other two fish represent Betty’s grandfather and father who lived in New York City.

Betty’s father came to America as a ‘paper son.”  In 1882 the Federal Government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning the immigration of Chinese. They were stereotyped and deemed unable to assimilate, but in truth they were competition for jobs, willing to work hard for low wages. Chinese already living in America would claim they had sons in China for which they obtained immigration papers. The papers were sold to Chinese men so they could come to America. As a ‘paper son’, Betty’s father had taken the surname Lee of his fake father, his real name being Eng.

Betty's father's fish  near the American President Line boat that brought him to America.

After 1943 Chinese living in America were able to become citizens but only 105 Chinese immigrants a year were allowed entrance.

Betty's father as a US serviceman

He joined the US Army during WWII. After his time in the army he returned to China to marry Betty's mother, a ‘war bride’.  Betty’s mother was very beautiful and always elegantly dressed, and Betty made sure her figure on the quilt had a hat.

Betty's beautiful mother

Betty’s father’s portrait on the quilt wears a blue Chinese jacket like he wore in China. In the 1960s amnesty was offered for those who arrive in America with false papers. Then Betty’s father and his family could legally take their rightful name of Eng. In his pocket is his business card for Eng’s Kitchen in Merrick, NY and his Army dog tags are in another pocket.

Betty's father with the tickets, a subway map, dog tags and restaurant business card

From Betty's book, her parents' ticket and pass

The two chicks near the central figure’s feet represent Betty's sister and brother. The chicks chase after their parents because they were left behind in China with their grandmother and did not see their parents again for ten years. They were only six and eight years old at the time.

Betty's mother's suitcase with photos of her husband and family,
the chicks representing the children they left behind in China

The New York City Subway map in her father’s hand shows where they lived in a house above his Canton restaurant. The New York City skyline and Statue of Liberty appear just left of his head, symbols of their adopted city and the welcoming symbol to immigrants.

The Statue of Liberty, NYC skyline, and the World Trade Center Twin towers which
Betty's parents saw fall while going to work on 9-11.

Betty grew up near Times Square and Rockefeller Center where she learned to ice skate. Her parents were on their way to Chinatown on 9-11 and they saw the towers go down, so the ‘brown chopstick buildings’ represent the World Trade Center buildings.

A large red house represents the house they grew up in, with Betty and her brother peeking from behind the bush in front of the house. Betty always had a ponytail like the girl on the quilt. An American flag pin from her father’s collection is in front of the house.

Betty and her brother peek from behind a push in front of their childhood home

Flowers on the quilt represent her mother’s love of flowers. She made shrimp dumplings and sewed clothing for Betty.

Her dad was a wonderful cook, played the Chinese banjo, and he loved the Yankees.

Betty's father at his restaurant

The family Chinese restaurant in NYC

It was a happy day when Betty finally met her older siblings. 

Betty with her family

The border blocks on the quilt are in colors of the US and China. The heart blocks represents “East Meets West.”

Betty working on Life is a Journey

Betty and her husband have lived in Metro Detroit for 40 years. When they arrived her community was very rural. It was quite a culture shock after living in New York City! They had to travel to Windsor, Canada to find a Chinese grocery. Now it is a thriving multicultural city. She is a retired math teacher.