History Mini-Reviews: You Never Forget Your First and Caste

These two books on American history seem to have little in common. 

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is a history of American society based on a caste system that dehumanizes and devalues African Americans. 

You Never Forget Your First demythologizes George Washington. Both offer new ways of interpreting America, past and present.

Alexis Coe's entertaining biography of George Washington, You Never Forget Your First encompasses a wide consideration of the man. One of the most sobering considerations looked at the enslaved people he owned, including a reading of the slave schedule. The reader is fanatic. A good first biography due to its entertaining nature, sure to appeal to younger people and those who don't usually delve into biographies. I borrowed an audiobook through the local library.

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
by Alexis Coe

Brittany Pressley (Narrator)
ISBN: 139781984842527

from the publisher

As the first woman historian to solely write an adult biography on Washington in more than a hundred years, Alexis Coe combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling each page.

In You Never Forget Your First, Washington's wild ambition is encouraged by his single mother and solidified by Martha Washington, the young, wealthy widow he marries. After the Revolutionary War, Washington is unanimously elected to the presidency, twice, and readers finally understand why his more educated, wealthy, and outwardly hungry Founding Fathers knew he was the only man for a seemingly impossible job. Washington loved to dance, offered unsolicited romantic advice, lost more battles than he won, and was almost felled by a life-threatening disease and a backstabbing cabinet. But he emerged successful, establishing values that ensured the survival of the United States of America to this day. Yet presidential biographers have always presented him in the same, stale way.

In a genre overdue for a shake-up, Coe highlights juicy details and skillfully differentiates between the legend and the man--and confirms she's a historian to be reckoned with

*****

Wilkerson argues that American racism has all the hallmarks of Hindi caste. She lays out her argument logically and illustrated with a multitude of examples from history, American slavery and Nazi Germany and the Hindi caste system. 

It’s heart-wrenching stuff. I am sick and disgusted by our history and current conduct as a society and as a political system. I have had to put this away for a bit. Brilliant, horrifying.

I purchased an ebook.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson

Random House 
Published August 4, 2020  
ISBN: 0593230256 (ISBN13: 9780593230251)

from the publisher

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Like millions of others, I watched the 1981 Great Performances television series of Brideshead Revisited--several times--and read the paperback published at that time.

Little, Brown and Company has reissued a 75th anniversary edition of the novel and I used this as an excuse to revisit Waugh's book.

I loved the nostalgia and longing regret for lost places and relationships. But the novel is not just a romance, or the story of a young man's first love and glimpse into another world. 

The story opens during WWII in England. A disillusioned, thirty-nine-year-old Capt. Ryder and his platoon have been moved to a new location, which he recognizes as the home of his college friend. 

I had been here before; I knew all about it, Ryder thinks about Brideshead. The book goes on to tell the events of twenty years ago.

Book I, Et in Arcadia Ego, begins with a flashback to Ryder's first view of Brideshead in the company of his Oxford friend Sebastian Flyte, who became Charles's first love. It is never quite clear the nature of that love. At Oxford, Charles notices Sebastian for his 'arresting' beauty and his eccentricities, including carrying a teddy-bear. "Sebastian takes Charles into his circle of friends, indulging in high-spirited (and drunken) adventures. One friend warns Charles about the Flyte family, including that Sebastian's parents live apart, but his mother's faith does not allow for divorce.

Charles's mother is dead and his father is self-involved and distant. Sebastian takes Charles to Brideshead to meet Nanny Hawkins, who still lives in the nursery, then Charles away before his family arrives, warning, "I am not going to have you get mixed up with my family. They're all so madly charming. All my life they've been taking things away from me."

Their second year at college, they become mutually exclusive in their friendship, but by the end of the year, their relationship comes to a break and they go their separate ways, Charles to art school against his father's wishes, while Sebastian's alcoholism brings a schism between him and his family. 

Charles rejection of the Brideshead's Catholicism also plays a part in the break. He is agnostic with a Protestant background. The Catholic faith is pure superstition to him. Sebastian's mother is devout, but is separated from her agnostic husband who lives abroad with a mistress. The elder Brideshead son wishes for a calling. The youngest daughter has faith, but not daughter Julia. Julia tells Charles that Sebastian has a calling, but flees from it.

Charles becomes an artist specializing in architecture and marries. Years later he and Sebastian's sister Julia fall in love and have an affair. They are waiting for their divorces to come through when the Brideshead patriarch returns to die in the family home. 

The family bickers over whether to bring a priest to their father's death bed; his death-bed conversion leads Julia to give up Charles for God. 

The last scene finds Charles in the Brideshead chapel, the eternal flame of faith burning, saying an ancient prayer.

Waugh wrote that "the whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that theologians won't recognize it," and "the book is about God." Waugh even considered changing the title to "A Household of Faith." 

Before he left for Oxford, Charles was given advice, including to avoid Anglo-Catholics, "they're all sodomites." Charles struggles to understand the Flyte's Catholic faith. "Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at that time," Charles says, adding "I had no religion." Although he had gone to church as a child, and "the masters who taught me Divinity told me that biblical texts were highly untrustworthy. They never suggested I should try to pray." He thinks about his devout mother died as a nurse volunteer during the war and recognizes he did inherit "some such spirit." "I have come to accept claims which then, in 1923, I never troubled to examine, and to accept the supernatural as the real."

He recounts a conversation with Sebastian who affirmed his simple faith and awareness of being "much wickeder." Charles is baffled. "...if you can believe all that and you don't want to be good, where's the difficulty about your religion?" he asks. 

Sebastian also recounts his family's "mixed" attitude toward faith, noting "happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with it, and that's all I want." But his pursuit of happiness makes him miserable. He takes up an unworthy, needy soul to care for, as if in penance, or perhaps longing for love or companionship. In the end, he finds a home with monks who forgive him his alcoholism. 

Julia's sudden change, the awareness that her faith does not recognize her divorce, ends any chance for happiness for Charles or herself. In his misery, somehow faith also comes to Charles.

It is a beautifully written last scene, Charles in the room that was built to be the Brideshead chapel, the lamp still burning above the altar. What the chapel and the flame represented had outlasted the human tragedies of time and history,something eternal that Charles could turn to. He is rejuvenated just by being there and reciting "a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words."

The moving and hopeful ending, Captain Ryder experiencing the sacred, is satisfying and uplifting. 

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
by Evelyn Waugh
Little, Brown & Co
paperback 
ISBN0316242101 (ISBN13: 9780316242103)

from the publisher

The gorgeous 75th-anniversary edition of Brideshead Revisited, the novel selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best of the century.  

The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece—a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.

Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity. 

Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley's Perestroika in Paris was an easy reading, charming book, but for many pages I wondered what was the 'point'? Every book that gives animals human thought and language has a point, right? 

Sure, Paras (short for Perestroika) is a wonderful character, a filly too curious for her own good, who leaves the comforts of her home at the stable and the horse racing she loves to see the world--or, at least, Paris under the Eiffel Tower.

Then there is Frida, the German Shorthaired Pointer ticked all over with a brown head and two patches, left on her own when her brilliant and eccentric owner is picked up from the streets by the gendarme. Frida understands human behavior better than we understand each other.

Paras and Frida meet up and help each other, for Paras has brought her groomer's purse filled with winnings from the last race Paras ran. Frida takes the euros to the local shops and returns with dinner for them and their new friends, the bickering mallard ducks, Sid and Nancy, and Raoul, an aged raven.

Paras walks the streets of Paris by night, visiting a Patisserie for a meal. Into her life comes Etienne, an eight-year-old human child living with his blind and deaf great-grandmother in the rundown family mansion. The elderly lady knits, using up her stash of yard, worrying about what will happen to her great-grandson upon her death, wondering if she did right by keeping him from school.

The child secretly takes Paras into his home and his heart, Frida joining the family. They are befriended by the house rats Conrad and his son Kurt. Together they cobble together everything they need.

Just when everything seems to have gone wrong, and Etienne faces his biggest challenge, the story resolves happily.

The story never gets too syrupy and never gets preachy. And yet, I did find a 'point'.

First, it is the story of family, the families we create by helping one another, joining our strengths, even if we seemingly have nothing in common--are 'different species'.

Second, it is about finding our bliss, how curiosity leads us to new discoveries and fulfillment.

Third, Etienne's family has survived horrible tragedy. WWI and WWII, the deaths of Etienne's great-grandfather and his grandfather and his parents. 

"It was their fate as a family, perhaps, or merely lick, merely a part of being French in the twentieth century, when wars came and went like terrifying, unstoppable tempests." ~from Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

Out of great tragedy, we can survive and even thrive.

And last of all, there is the fortitude and persistence these animals show, accepting what they cannot change and changing what they can change.

In the end, I discovered a novel that can be read by any age, in any age, portraying the core values that make a life.

I was sent a free book by the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

Perestroika in Paris
by Jane Smiley
Publication December 1, 2020
Knopf
$26.95 hardcover
ISBN 10: 52552035X; ISBN  13: 9780525520351

from the publisher

Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and--she's a curious filly--wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather and Christmas near, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom

The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Spokane felt like the intersection of Frontier and Civilized, the final gasp of a thing before it turned into something else--the Last Rush Town, Gig called it, for the silver rushes in the foothills, but also the rush of railroad and bank, school and merchant, brick, stone, and steel, old-growth timber turned to pillared houses, hammer popping nonstop against the wild, a mad rush to log and pave the whole world.~ from The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

In 1909, the cold millions,"living and scraping and fighting and dying," with no chance in this world, are countered by the cold millionaires in their palatial, golden homes who dole out thousands to secure their privilege. 

Migrant workers sheltered in open fields as they drifted between cities, looking for work. The police cleared out the vagrants. The working men were lured by union organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World, promising to give workers a fair deal and a voice by taking power out of the hands of capitalist bosses.

The rise of unions was met with hostility, their leaders vilified as anarchists and revolutionaries who recruited discouraged workers into an expendable army. 

The rich didn't want to level the playing field. They sold the dream of opportunity, the chance to rise into wealth like they had.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps originally meant to do the impossible. We hear about the few who started with nothing and built empires. And of the 1% who now control the bulk of money, many unconcerned about the cold millions who exist outside of the mythic American Dream.

Jess Walter's novel tells the story of Gig and Rye, sons of Irish immigrants who have died, the boys become migrant workers. Pawns in the system, they had to pay money for information on who is hiring; after a while they were fired and once again had to pay money for information on who is hiring...

Gig is a Wobblie. When Rye sees him arrested at a peaceful demonstration of unionists, he is moved to join the protest. East Coast union organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn arrives to raise money to hire Charles Darrow to defend Gig and the five hundred workers wrongfully imprisoned and inhumanly treated. Rye becomes a symbol--the sixteen-year-old orphan abused by the police.

Rye is also courted by the richest man in town, Lemuel Brand, to spy on Gurley. Brand hires Dalveaux to stop the next union meeting, rolling out a speech about the "dangers of socialism--East Coast agitators--immigrant filth--concerned mine owners and business leaders--real Americans--jail full of vermin--mayor's hands tied--in support of police--moral responsibility--commercial interests--future in balance--last stand of decency--". Rye and Gurley are to be stopped. 

One man to a boat. We all go over alone. The lesson comes early in the novel. Cops and killers, detectives and anarchists, wealthy men deciding everything in a back room, and Gurley--Rye knew them all. Each tried to be in charge of his own life. Rye outlasted them all, partly because of Gig's sacrifice, and partly because he found work and a family that took him in. Rye wasn't alone in the boat, after all. He was lucky. He won a few battles, and Gurley said that was all one could hope for in this life.

The Cold Millions is about the rise of the unions; it is historical fiction that makes past places and people come alive; it is a family drama that will tug at your heartstrings. The writing is fantastic. And best of all, it is a mirror flashing light on timeless social and personal conflicts.

I purchased a book.

I previously read and reviewed the author's novel Beautiful Ruins.

The Cold Millions
by Jess Walter
Harper, Collins
Published October, 2020

from the publisher

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.

An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice,  and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a  kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams.

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.

Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?

Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).

Covid-19 Life: Quilts, Books, FurGrankids, and Christmas

With Covid-19 cases at record highs, we remain in social isolation. We miss seeing our family, but we keep busy. As Jane Austen stated in Emma, "Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

Jane Austen Witty & Wise coloring book from Dover Press

I discovered that DMC has free patterns on its website! I found these mushroom embroidery patterns that I knew would go great with the 1970's vintage fabric I had in my stash that has mushrooms on it. Another quilt top for the pile to be quilted.

I started this Row by Row quilt in 2014 but when it came to machine quilting it on my previous sewing machine, I was not pleased. I  finally finished it with my new Bernina 540 QE .

The blocks are from Michigan quilt shops near Houghton Lake and West Branch.

I am finally hand quilting the Hospital Sketches quilt from the Barbara Brackman quilt-along.

And I am machine quilting the Gingiber Thicket animals quilt.

From BookishFirst, Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen arrived yesterday and I have already read three of the stories. The writing is wonderful and the stories so revealing about daily life in China.

To come is Better Luck Next Time by Julia Clairborn Johnson, a LibraryThing Early Readers giveaway. I won The Education of Delhomme: Chopin, Sand, & La France from Words & Peace blog. 

We miss Ellie, Sunny, and Gus but the kids keep us posted on Facebook. Kitten Gus, all of 7 pounds now, loves Sunny and sleeps in her crate. Ellie got jealous and tried to take over Sunny's bed but was not amused when Sunny tried to fit in with her!

Ellie returned to her own crate, Gus joined Sunny, and all was well in the house.

The kids sent us an early Christmas present--a huge selection of Simpson & Vail teas, orange marmalade, and tea cookies! We were nearly out, so this was a real hit. Most of our favorites are included, including Literary Teas Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and Beatrix Potter. Also, the new National Park teas.

I brewed a cup of the Shenandoah National Park tea and had drunk half of it before I noticed it was a bright blueberry color! It has blue pea flowers (and lemon and ginger) which I learned is an ancient tea with many health benefits.

We have our tree up and some Christmas quilts on the wall. 

Our ornaments have stories, hand crafted by family members, or ourselves, and gifts from parishioners or coworkers over the years, or representing our interests. 

Even Sunny is getting into the spirit, sporting a velvet and fur and bell trimmed collar! I hope you are able to get into the holiday spirit. 

A Singular Beauty by Jerome Charyn

It was from my mother that I learned how memory could kill.~~from A Singular Beauty by Jerome Charyn

As she walked down the street, people were stopped in their tracks by her Hollywood beauty. Faigele attracted men in power, but it was her strength that allowed her to manipulate them.

A Singular Beauty recalls Jerome Charyn's mother and his childhood in the Bronx.

Faigele and and her brother Mordecai were from Grodno, Belarus. In 1927, Faigele's brother sent her to America, promising to join her later. She never heard from him again. Her deep depression left preschooler 'Baby' Charyn as her caretaker. Only when it was arranged for her to receive a fake letter from her brother did she rejoin the world.

The Bronx kindergarten was closed, so Faigele and 'Baby' Charyn taught themselves to read with Bambi. When Faigele became a poker dealer, Baby came with her into a world of criminals and politicians and his mother's lover.

An evocative and unsettling portrait of an era, a neighborhood, and a family, Baby somehow rising above the dysfunctional and complex family and social impediments, this brief memoir makes a lasting impression. Charyn's memories are embellished with a writer's flare so that his story becomes more than memories shared, taking on a cinematic vividness . 

I received a free ebook from the author. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher

In A Singular Beauty, Jerome Charyn magically transports the reader back to his childhood in 1940s Bronx, filled with the tensions of World War II, the rationing of food and fuel, and corrupt public officials who feast on immigrant poverty and hardship. This is the story of his mother, "Faigele," the queen of poker dealers in the West Bronx. Her legendary beauty hypnotizes us as her days and nights are consumed by politicians and crooks; always at her side is young Jerome, whom everyone calls "Baby." The poker hall becomes his kindergarten. Is he her accomplice, her companion, or her cover? Charyn's memoir captures the essence of a child thrust into the role of an adult as he navigates a movie-set world tempered by the harsh realities of the neighborhood and the times.

"He doubtless knows that he has captured an era to perfection . . . This is a terrific little book," -- John Irving, Bestselling author, National Book Award and Oscar winner, from his New York Times Book Review of this memoir.

Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With more than 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life

A Singular Beauty
by Jerome Charyn
Stay Thirsty Press, An Imprint of Stay Thirsty Publishing, A Division of Stay Thirsty Media, Inc. (November 8, 2020)
ASIN : B08MZC6HFP
97 pages
$4.99

Mini-Reviews: Disturbing Reads

It is amazing what Kearse knew from family stories about her family history and even more startling what she learned from her research. A terrific alternate history and memoir.

I borrowed the book from my public library.

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family
by Bettye Kearse
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published March 24th 2020  
ISBN132860439X (ISBN13: 9781328604392)

from the publisher

For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griottes (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo—“Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest. 

Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison’s Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn. 

Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in search of the whole story.

I had read Things We Lost in the Fire and quickly requested this new book. I was unsettled by the early stories, then became squeamish and finally had to walk away. The horror was too much for me. That being said, I will admit that the writing is amazing.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
by Mariana Enriquez
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Hogarth
Pub Date 12 Jan 2021 
ISBN 9780593134078
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.

Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.