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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
slow-paced
This is on my "for school" shelf, but really, we only had to read the first 65 pages for school. I continued because it is such a fabulous book, and I don't regret it, even if it did take me all semester. It was well worth the time it took to get through it, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
It reads almost like a book of poems, or at least that's how I read it. It's like a mosaic of small snapshots that, put together, tell a horror story. It's like reading a scrapbook through pictures. It's absolutely fantastic, and it's really hard to classify exactly what it is. Even the author says that in the introduction. But, in my opinion, it tells the story of the Americas perfectly. Galeano's language is creative and poetic, telling even the most horrific of stories in a way that's absolutely beautiful. Often, I found myself so wonderstruck by his wording I had to stop for a second to soak it in.
If you ask me, this is rather a balanced and honest portrayal of what happened, a perspective the almost never gets told, and it's truly told beautifully.
I'm not sure if the reader is supposed to be able to follow the stories of individual people. I did to an extent, but I couldn't really follow them easily because of the fragmented way it was written. This didn't bother me at all. For me, it served to show how widespread and unanimous the oppression was. It was as if there was so much of it, you couldn't pin it down to any specific person. Honestly, there is nothing I can criticize about this book and I absolutely cannot wait to read the next two.
It reads almost like a book of poems, or at least that's how I read it. It's like a mosaic of small snapshots that, put together, tell a horror story. It's like reading a scrapbook through pictures. It's absolutely fantastic, and it's really hard to classify exactly what it is. Even the author says that in the introduction. But, in my opinion, it tells the story of the Americas perfectly. Galeano's language is creative and poetic, telling even the most horrific of stories in a way that's absolutely beautiful. Often, I found myself so wonderstruck by his wording I had to stop for a second to soak it in.
If you ask me, this is rather a balanced and honest portrayal of what happened, a perspective the almost never gets told, and it's truly told beautifully.
I'm not sure if the reader is supposed to be able to follow the stories of individual people. I did to an extent, but I couldn't really follow them easily because of the fragmented way it was written. This didn't bother me at all. For me, it served to show how widespread and unanimous the oppression was. It was as if there was so much of it, you couldn't pin it down to any specific person. Honestly, there is nothing I can criticize about this book and I absolutely cannot wait to read the next two.
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Confusing and de centralized history of Latin America, pre and post colonialism. A story of loss and recovery.
Galeano is a beautiful writer, but a dishonest polemicist who interprets everything as further evidence that Europeans and capitalism are evil. The format of this book -- 200 one page chapters that are each intended to stand on their own -- is also tiring.
I'm all for semi-experimental, fragmented narratives, but I ended up being desperate for something to hold into and carry me through these bits of history. I gave up halfway through. I appreciate the complication of history, but felt it was lacking in something. Or maybe I was lacking a bit in historical context.
A história de gente que serviu, e serve sempre, de carne para canhão, de braços para as minas, de acendalha para os apetites imperialistas.
Foi triste conhecer um pouco mais do destino de Palmares, para dar um exemplo das múltiplas histórias tristes, de gente como todos nós, mas feliz porque ser humano é ser também resistência, compaixão e luta.
Foi triste conhecer um pouco mais do destino de Palmares, para dar um exemplo das múltiplas histórias tristes, de gente como todos nós, mas feliz porque ser humano é ser também resistência, compaixão e luta.
"Δεν είμαι ιστορικός. Είμαι συγγραφέας που θα ήθελα να συμβάλω στη διάσωση της απαχθείσας μνήμης όλης της Αμερικής, αλλά κυρίως της Λατινικής Αμερικής." Δεν θα μπορούσα να διαφωνώ περισσότερο με τον συγγραφέα αυτού του έργου.
Ξεκινησα να το διαβάζω γέματος καχυποψία, καθώς οποιαδήποτε προσπάθεια θηματοποίησης ενός πληθυσμού μου, ειδικά σε ένα ιστορικό γεγονός, προκαλεί φοβερή πλήξη. Αντιθέτως, διάβασα ένα έργο με ειλικρίνεια και οξυδέρκεια που θα ζήλευε κάθε ιστορικό non-fiction. Ο συγγραφέας με τον χαρακτηριστικό τρόπο των Λατινοαμερικανών συγγραφέων, μέσα από θρύλους, ιστορικά γεγονότα, παραδόσεις, ιστορίες, ποίηση, παραδοσιακά τραγούδια, μας εισάγει στον κόσμο της αποικιακής Αμερικής του 16 αιώνα.
Τελειωνοντας το βιβλίο, είμαστε σε θέση να κατανοήσουμε την αίσθηση της εποχής, τον πόνο τον ντόπιων, την αγωνιά των εισβολέων, το δράμα των σκλάβων, την έλεγχο του κλήρου, την μοτίβο κοινωνικοοικονομικοπολιτισμικων αναταραχών που που προκάλεσε η ανακάλυψη της νέας ηπείρου. Βαθια κατανόηση που σου επιτρέπει να προβληματιστείς, να συμφωνήσεις, να διαφωνήσεις, να αναπτύξεις τις θέσεις σου πάνω σε. αυτά τα ζητήματα, πέρα από επικλήσεις στο συναίσθημα.
Για έμενα αυτό είναι ιστορία!
Ξεκινησα να το διαβάζω γέματος καχυποψία, καθώς οποιαδήποτε προσπάθεια θηματοποίησης ενός πληθυσμού μου, ειδικά σε ένα ιστορικό γεγονός, προκαλεί φοβερή πλήξη. Αντιθέτως, διάβασα ένα έργο με ειλικρίνεια και οξυδέρκεια που θα ζήλευε κάθε ιστορικό non-fiction. Ο συγγραφέας με τον χαρακτηριστικό τρόπο των Λατινοαμερικανών συγγραφέων, μέσα από θρύλους, ιστορικά γεγονότα, παραδόσεις, ιστορίες, ποίηση, παραδοσιακά τραγούδια, μας εισάγει στον κόσμο της αποικιακής Αμερικής του 16 αιώνα.
Τελειωνοντας το βιβλίο, είμαστε σε θέση να κατανοήσουμε την αίσθηση της εποχής, τον πόνο τον ντόπιων, την αγωνιά των εισβολέων, το δράμα των σκλάβων, την έλεγχο του κλήρου, την μοτίβο κοινωνικοοικονομικοπολιτισμικων αναταραχών που που προκάλεσε η ανακάλυψη της νέας ηπείρου. Βαθια κατανόηση που σου επιτρέπει να προβληματιστείς, να συμφωνήσεις, να διαφωνήσεις, να αναπτύξεις τις θέσεις σου πάνω σε. αυτά τα ζητήματα, πέρα από επικλήσεις στο συναίσθημα.
Για έμενα αυτό είναι ιστορία!
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Genesis (Memory of Fire, Volume 1) is a monumental work that makes for a rich education. Eduardo Galeano includes more than three hundred entries, each about a page in length, capturing events, happenings, or short tales taken from the Americas, mostly Latin America, beginning with the first voices prior to Columbus and continuing up to the year 1700. Eduardo Galeano has his own way of expressing what he reports, often incorporating humor, irony, or satire. However, whatever he writes, a perceptive reader can detect great nuggets of wisdom in each and every entry.
Here are four quotes from Eduardo's Preface that set the tone. I've also includes my modest comments.
"Poor History had stopped breathing: betrayed in academic texts, lied about in classrooms, drowned in dates, they had imprisoned her in museums and buried her, with floral wreaths, beneath statuary bronze and monumental marble.
Perhaps Memory of Fire can help give her back breath, liberty, and the world."
As they say, history is the story told by the winners. When Eduardo was a youngster sitting in class, he had the good sense to know what the teacher was saying amounted to nothing more than a pile of deadly lies students were being forced to memorize. When he raised any objection, he was either told to keep his mouth shut or, more usually, ordered to leave the classroom.
"I am not a historian. I am a writer who would like to contribute to the rescue of the kidnapped memory of all America, but above all of Latin America, that despised and beloved land: I would like to talk to her, share her secrets, ask of what difficult clays she was born, from what acts of love and violation she comes."
This surely counts as one of the book's charms: Eduardo is not a historian or academic; he's a writer who knows the way something is told is equally important to what is told, the subject being addressed.
"Memory of Fire is not an anthology, clearly not; but I don't know if it is a novel or essay or epic poem or testament or chronicle or . . . . Deciding robs me of no sleep. I do not believe in the frontiers that, according to literature's customs officers, separate the forms."
Call it what you will, but Eduardo has written a work of great literature that will take its place on the shelf alongside Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jorge Amado.
"There is nothing neutral about this historical narration. Unable to distance myself, I take sides: I confess it and am not sorry. However, each fragment of this huge mosaic is based on a solid documentary foundation. What is told her has happened, although I tell it in my style and manner."
Tell it like it is, Eduardo! In Memory of Fire, as in each of the author's many works, he speaks out against hatred, greed, stupidity, regimentation, violence, repression, and exploitation in their many repugnant forms.
THE RAIN
There's dozens of short passages from American societies and civilizations addressing things like The Creation, Time, Day, The Flood, Resurrection, Magic and Laughter. The event or subject will always have a connection with nature and the natural world. And why does it rain? We're given a sweet tale of a little girl who suddenly discovers she's alive. One day, on a rocky mountain, when she went to fetch water, snakes were about to eat her up when the little girl sang. “From far away, the thunder birds heard the call. They attacked the rocky mountain with lightning, rescuing the prisoner, and killed the snakes.
The thunder birds left the little girl in the fork of the tree.
“You'll live here,” they told her. “We'll come every time you sing.”
Whenever the little green tree frog sings from his tree, the thunderclaps gather and it rains upon the world.”
1531: A LETTER
“Fray Bartolomé de las Cases is writing to the Council of the Indies. It would have been better for the Indians, he maintains, to go to hell with their heresies, their procrastination and their isolation, than to be saved by the Christians. The cries of so much spilled human blood reach all the way to heaven: those burned alive, roasted on grills, thrown to wild dogs.”
This short passage is representative for much of the history of Europe's invasion of the Americas from 1492 – 1700. Europe seeks all the gold and other resources from the New World. As for the native peoples, if they are unwilling to submit to slavery or do things like spend their lives toiling in sugar fields or breaking their backs in silver mines, better they should be tortured and murdered, pagans that they are.
To underscore this dreadful point, another entry from 1531 relates that a Bishop Zumárraga was “guardian of the branding iron that stamps on the Indians' faces the names of their proprietors. He threw the Aztec codices into the fire, papers printed by the hand of Satan, and destroyed five hundred temples and twenty thousand idols.” Most unfortunately, it wasn't until deep into the 20th century that scholars, historians, and archeologists began to appreciate Aztec culture and art.
1538: BLACKBEARD, REDBEARD, WHITEBEARD
Eduardo includes a humorous episode of three armies meeting in the Valley of Bogotá, prepared to slice one another to pieces before claiming the golden city of El Dorado as their own. “Then the German bursts out laughing, doubles up with mirth, and the Andalusians catch the contagion until the three captains collapse, floored by laughter and hunger and what brought them all there, that which is without being and arrived without coming: the realization that El Dorado won't be anybody's."
1666: NEW YORK
As with many of Eduardo's entries, we can learn a number of shocking facts about history. I'll close with this entry that can serve as a prime example. How many people, especially Americans, know how Wall Street, the hub of the financial district in downtown New York City, got its name? Eduardo lets us know back when New York was New Amsterdam belonging to the Dutch, the industrious Dutch ran the most important slave market in North America – and Wall Street is named after the wall built to stop blacks from escaping.
Eduardo Galeano from Uruguay, 1940-2015
"لست مؤرخاً، أنا كاتب يحب أن يساهم في إنقاذ الذاكرة المخطوفة لكل أمريكاوخصوصاً لأمريكا اللاتينية،الأرض المحتقرة والمحبوبة : أحب أن اتحدث معها ، أن اتقاسم أسرارها ، أن أسألها من أي صلصال شاق ولدت ومن أية (...)اغتصابات جاءت
-أنشودة كوزكو-
رغبت لامة
ان يكون لها شعر ذهبي
متألقاً كالشمس
قوياً كالحب
وناعماً كالضباب
يحله الفجر
لينسج ضفيرة
يعلم عليها
عقدة بعد عقدة
الأقمار التي تعبر
والأزهار التي تذبل"
-أنشودة كوزكو-
رغبت لامة
ان يكون لها شعر ذهبي
متألقاً كالشمس
قوياً كالحب
وناعماً كالضباب
يحله الفجر
لينسج ضفيرة
يعلم عليها
عقدة بعد عقدة
الأقمار التي تعبر
والأزهار التي تذبل"