What an amazing story this is. I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book. I may not have if we hadn't chosen it as our book club selection.
This is a memoir of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's life growing up in a Muslim family in Africa, then escaping to the Netherlands and then moving to the U.S.
One thing in this book that I think I will never forget is the description of her circumcision. I had heard of female circumcision before but never really allowed myself to think of the details. How horrific it is. Three women held her down, "Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia,..." She was 5 years old. And her grandmother held her down and comforted her while it was being done to both her and her sister, only 4. It's almost unbearable to think about. And it still happens.
Another thought I have after reading this book is to wonder why some people are born with the spirit and mind to escape this kind of upbringing, or any kind of hard upbringing. Why did Ayaan question the statements the adults in her life were making? Why did she decide to run away rather than go along with the inevitable? Within her is some kind of spirit that so many others in the same situation either do not have or do not act on.
I feel bad that Ayaan now believes in no God, no religion at all. She tried to be a devout Muslim. She reminded me of the soldier who worshiped the wrong god in Narnia. She believed Allah was good and loving and tried to be good and loving herself as a response. I feel sorry that she has no belief now, when she could have God's love and strength. I can absolutely see why she would give up the whole idea of God or religion. I just wish she could find the love of God somehow. Like when the soldier found Aslan after going through the door, I wish Ayaan could find that all along God has been loving her and holding her in His arms.
It is also amazing to me how much she loves her mother and father and others in her life who were so much a cause of the many bad things that happened in her life. In the introduction, Christopher Hitchens asked her about this. "Her response was twofold. First, she said, she felt on balance fortunate. She was, after all, alive to tell the tale. Second, she had seen what anger had done to her mother, a woman 'imprisoned' in resentment at the many ways that life had maltreated her." I think that beyond this, her attitude toward her mother and others shows the great power of love. Even when she tells about how her mother beat her or said terribly hurtful things to her, Ayaan finds reasons, or you might call them excuses, for what her mother does. She may say that her mother was acting out in anger for wrongs done to her or even more astonishing to me she might even say that her mother was acting out of love, just a misguided way of doing it. How powerful the love of a child for her parents.
This book also raises the question of how we should coexist with Muslims. We all try to be accepting and politically correct about it, to allow them to have their beliefs without condemning them for them. But there are some things that it seems obvious we should not allow. Something like female circumcision is most likely a fairly "easy" one. But arranged marriages is trickier. Even things like allowing the wearing of the hajib is difficult.
A phrase like "the power of story" can seem trivial and meaningless but in this story I think it takes on meaning. There is power in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's story -- the power to make us think about how we should act towards others, what we should do about awful things that are happening in the world, even how we can live as a Christian in a way that shows God's love rather than the many ways Christianity can be used to control others' thinking or behavior.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The Time Traveler's Wife
I just finished The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I wasn't sure I'd like it but I did like it, very much. It's told from the point of view of two people, Clare, who is the time traveler's wife, and Henry, the time traveler.
It's a love story but there are many twists and turns because of the time traveling. Clare meets Henry when she's only 6 and he is in his 40's. Each section begins with a date and the ages of the two characters. Then one or the other will speak. It sounds weird and science-fiction-y but it's not, really. I thought it was a really good story, well written, a page-turner in a way.
I'm reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss for my other book club. It's pretty good so far. I started it as I began a plane trip to Michigan, then I stopped reading that and started reading The Time Traveler's Wife because that is a big, heavy book I hadn't wanted to carry with me on the plane. Now I'm having a bit of a hard time getting back into The History of Love. I may have to go back and re-read to figure out what's going on.
It's a love story but there are many twists and turns because of the time traveling. Clare meets Henry when she's only 6 and he is in his 40's. Each section begins with a date and the ages of the two characters. Then one or the other will speak. It sounds weird and science-fiction-y but it's not, really. I thought it was a really good story, well written, a page-turner in a way.
I'm reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss for my other book club. It's pretty good so far. I started it as I began a plane trip to Michigan, then I stopped reading that and started reading The Time Traveler's Wife because that is a big, heavy book I hadn't wanted to carry with me on the plane. Now I'm having a bit of a hard time getting back into The History of Love. I may have to go back and re-read to figure out what's going on.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Been a while
I finished The Reason for God today and I changed my mind about it. As I kept going, I grew to like what the author was saying more and more. I plan to re-read this one.
The book club meeting went well. Steve made a good comment about Owen Meany, I thought. He doesn't read much fiction and he said he was having kind of a hard time reading the book. He kept waiting for more to happen. But once he finished he said that he thought a big theme of this book is that everything you do matters. You may not ever have something as dramatic happen as Owen did, but still what you do matters and you never know how it will.
We chose Infidel for the next book, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I read and watched some of the stuff on the web about it. Looks like it'll be very interesting and a good one to discuss.
The book club meeting went well. Steve made a good comment about Owen Meany, I thought. He doesn't read much fiction and he said he was having kind of a hard time reading the book. He kept waiting for more to happen. But once he finished he said that he thought a big theme of this book is that everything you do matters. You may not ever have something as dramatic happen as Owen did, but still what you do matters and you never know how it will.
We chose Infidel for the next book, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I read and watched some of the stuff on the web about it. Looks like it'll be very interesting and a good one to discuss.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Not Owen Meany
OK, so I feel like blogging but I have nothing left to say about Owen Meany right now. Our meeting is tomorrow. Maybe I'll have more to say after that.
For now, I'll write about some of my other reading. I took a trip to the used bookstore. Actually I went there thinking I'd find Owen Meany. That wasn't there, but a lot more was!
I picked up Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope. She's a "member of the same family as novelist Anthony Trollope", according to the back cover, and I've read quite a few of her other books. I enjoy them. I think we read one of them in my other bookclub. If not, I know her name came up and Jan S., one of the members, did not like her, or at least not the book we were discussing at that point.
Anyway, I thought Marrying the Mistress was a good read. A man in his sixties, who was married for many years, had a 7 year affair with a much younger woman and finally decides to marry her. Of course the wife is extremely upset and so is his older son (he has two sons). This son already has a kind of strange relationship with his mother in that his mother relies heavily on him. The husband was extremely busy and not home much and the mother started depending on her older son instead. Now when the marriage breaks up, that dependency intensifies.
I like the way you get to know each of the characters so well. It's not actually told from the point of view from each of the characters but you're sort of "in the head" of each of them. It seemed very believable to me, and it was interesting to watch the developing emotions and thought changes as things progressed.
I also read a collection of short stories edited and introduced by David Sedaris called Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. He said he named it that because he saw a work of art with that title and thought it was a fitting one for this collection -- he feels like a child in front of all these "Herculean" writers. Sometimes I don't like short stories. They often leave me feeling hungry for more. The short stories by Salinger do that to me, although I absolutely love reading anything more he wrote about the characters in the Glass family. But I want MORE, always.
Anyway, I enjoyed this collection, even the one by Flannery O'Connor. I was absolutely soured on Flannery O'Connor by an English class at Calvin that ENTIRELY her writing -- critiques and essays on her short stories and a term paper on a novel. Oh, I was so sick of "the grotesque". But I guess now that that course is over 30 years behind me I can get over it. :)
One of the stories in the collection I had heard already on my iPod. I listen sometimes to an NPR show where someone from "The New Yorker" magazine interviews a writer and the writer selects a piece of fiction that was at some time published in the magazine, to read and discuss. Every episode I've heard I've really enjoyed.
Another book I read was An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. He's an interesting writer. It'd be something to do what he does, study people or certain kinds of people and then write in-depth about them and whatever strange neurological problem they're experiencing. This book had "seven paradoxical tales", as the subtitle said. I found the ones about colorblind people especially interesting. My brother Dan was colorblind and my son Luke is, too. Sometimes I think it must be sad not to see all the beautiful colors we're surrounded by. But these "tales" gave some different insights into that.
For one thing, a footnote said that during WWII colorblind spotters were invaluable. They could see people in forests or places where they were trying to camouflage themselves. People who could see color would miss them, but the figures stood out to colorblind people. Randy said they used them in Vietnam, too. So although they miss colors, there are other things that stand out more to them than to us.
There was one story about an artist who suddenly stopped seeing color. It was a really strange thing. He was in a small accident and after that lost his ability to see or even remember color. He was an artist and he used a lot of color in his art so he was just devastated by his loss. He felt suicidal about it. But slowly he started to adjust and even enjoy his new sight. He started living more at night. He would travel to new places and walk or visit them in the nighttime. He said it was like a whole new world to explore. He started painting in black and white and then began experimenting with putting some color into the paintings even though he can't see the color. After 2 or 3 years, I can't remember which, a doctor thought that he might be able to reverse the colorblindness with some surgery and the artist said no. He thought he might go through another terrible time of adjustment and he was content now. Pretty interesting.
Currently I'm reading two books. I don't usually do that but I am this time because one is non-fiction called The Reason for God by Timothy Keller and the other is fiction, The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. Sometimes I don't feel like reading non-fiction. It doesn't give me that escapism I'm addicted to. So I'm reading The Reason for God during the day and when I feel like a story I read the other.
My brother Joel recommended The Reason for God. The subtitle is "Belief in an Age of Skepticism" and Joel said he's going to do an adult Sunday School class based on it. I often go through periods of doubt. Really, I'm pretty much always struggling with that in my faith. It's sort of like I have this faith but I'm constantly questioning whether it can all really be true. I try to push the questioning out and just believe and most of the time that works just fine. This book has a chapter about many of the "usual" sort of arguments against faith, such as the problem with there being only one true religion, suffering in the world, all that stuff.
What I've read so far has been pretty good. It seems, though, as if much of his response to these things is to flip it around and say that the person positing the argument against faith is himself doing the same thing he argues someone with faith shouldn't do. For example, someone who says religious people shouldn't claim that their religion is the only true religion are themselves claiming that what they are saying is the only truth. I'm not sure that's such a great way to take away the argument. But I plan to keep reading, I'm interested in what he says.
The other book, The Almost Moon, is kind of strange. Alice Sebold wrote The Lovely Bones, which was also very strange. This one starts with "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." Pretty gripping first sentence, I'd say! It's written in first person and I like the character so far. It's a woman somewhere in her fifties, I think, with 2 adult daughters, who has been taking care of her mother - although her mother was still living on her own in her own house. After that first sentence it goes back to how she ended up at her mother's house that day and then on to more of her life - her marriage, divorce, childhood and so on.
So, there we are. I'm going to try to keep blogging about my reading, just because I enjoy it, not just the books we're reading for the book club.
For now, I'll write about some of my other reading. I took a trip to the used bookstore. Actually I went there thinking I'd find Owen Meany. That wasn't there, but a lot more was!
I picked up Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope. She's a "member of the same family as novelist Anthony Trollope", according to the back cover, and I've read quite a few of her other books. I enjoy them. I think we read one of them in my other bookclub. If not, I know her name came up and Jan S., one of the members, did not like her, or at least not the book we were discussing at that point.
Anyway, I thought Marrying the Mistress was a good read. A man in his sixties, who was married for many years, had a 7 year affair with a much younger woman and finally decides to marry her. Of course the wife is extremely upset and so is his older son (he has two sons). This son already has a kind of strange relationship with his mother in that his mother relies heavily on him. The husband was extremely busy and not home much and the mother started depending on her older son instead. Now when the marriage breaks up, that dependency intensifies.
I like the way you get to know each of the characters so well. It's not actually told from the point of view from each of the characters but you're sort of "in the head" of each of them. It seemed very believable to me, and it was interesting to watch the developing emotions and thought changes as things progressed.
I also read a collection of short stories edited and introduced by David Sedaris called Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. He said he named it that because he saw a work of art with that title and thought it was a fitting one for this collection -- he feels like a child in front of all these "Herculean" writers. Sometimes I don't like short stories. They often leave me feeling hungry for more. The short stories by Salinger do that to me, although I absolutely love reading anything more he wrote about the characters in the Glass family. But I want MORE, always.
Anyway, I enjoyed this collection, even the one by Flannery O'Connor. I was absolutely soured on Flannery O'Connor by an English class at Calvin that ENTIRELY her writing -- critiques and essays on her short stories and a term paper on a novel. Oh, I was so sick of "the grotesque". But I guess now that that course is over 30 years behind me I can get over it. :)
One of the stories in the collection I had heard already on my iPod. I listen sometimes to an NPR show where someone from "The New Yorker" magazine interviews a writer and the writer selects a piece of fiction that was at some time published in the magazine, to read and discuss. Every episode I've heard I've really enjoyed.
Another book I read was An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. He's an interesting writer. It'd be something to do what he does, study people or certain kinds of people and then write in-depth about them and whatever strange neurological problem they're experiencing. This book had "seven paradoxical tales", as the subtitle said. I found the ones about colorblind people especially interesting. My brother Dan was colorblind and my son Luke is, too. Sometimes I think it must be sad not to see all the beautiful colors we're surrounded by. But these "tales" gave some different insights into that.
For one thing, a footnote said that during WWII colorblind spotters were invaluable. They could see people in forests or places where they were trying to camouflage themselves. People who could see color would miss them, but the figures stood out to colorblind people. Randy said they used them in Vietnam, too. So although they miss colors, there are other things that stand out more to them than to us.
There was one story about an artist who suddenly stopped seeing color. It was a really strange thing. He was in a small accident and after that lost his ability to see or even remember color. He was an artist and he used a lot of color in his art so he was just devastated by his loss. He felt suicidal about it. But slowly he started to adjust and even enjoy his new sight. He started living more at night. He would travel to new places and walk or visit them in the nighttime. He said it was like a whole new world to explore. He started painting in black and white and then began experimenting with putting some color into the paintings even though he can't see the color. After 2 or 3 years, I can't remember which, a doctor thought that he might be able to reverse the colorblindness with some surgery and the artist said no. He thought he might go through another terrible time of adjustment and he was content now. Pretty interesting.
Currently I'm reading two books. I don't usually do that but I am this time because one is non-fiction called The Reason for God by Timothy Keller and the other is fiction, The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. Sometimes I don't feel like reading non-fiction. It doesn't give me that escapism I'm addicted to. So I'm reading The Reason for God during the day and when I feel like a story I read the other.
My brother Joel recommended The Reason for God. The subtitle is "Belief in an Age of Skepticism" and Joel said he's going to do an adult Sunday School class based on it. I often go through periods of doubt. Really, I'm pretty much always struggling with that in my faith. It's sort of like I have this faith but I'm constantly questioning whether it can all really be true. I try to push the questioning out and just believe and most of the time that works just fine. This book has a chapter about many of the "usual" sort of arguments against faith, such as the problem with there being only one true religion, suffering in the world, all that stuff.
What I've read so far has been pretty good. It seems, though, as if much of his response to these things is to flip it around and say that the person positing the argument against faith is himself doing the same thing he argues someone with faith shouldn't do. For example, someone who says religious people shouldn't claim that their religion is the only true religion are themselves claiming that what they are saying is the only truth. I'm not sure that's such a great way to take away the argument. But I plan to keep reading, I'm interested in what he says.
The other book, The Almost Moon, is kind of strange. Alice Sebold wrote The Lovely Bones, which was also very strange. This one starts with "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." Pretty gripping first sentence, I'd say! It's written in first person and I like the character so far. It's a woman somewhere in her fifties, I think, with 2 adult daughters, who has been taking care of her mother - although her mother was still living on her own in her own house. After that first sentence it goes back to how she ended up at her mother's house that day and then on to more of her life - her marriage, divorce, childhood and so on.
So, there we are. I'm going to try to keep blogging about my reading, just because I enjoy it, not just the books we're reading for the book club.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)