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inhio's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
counterfeitnickel's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
A great introduction to contemporary Honduran history, beautifully mixed with memoir. Bleak, but with elements of grounded hope. At moments, can get a little repetitive.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Gun violence, and Sexual violence
johnadonaghy's review
4.0
I live and work as a Catholic deacon in southwest Honduras. I’ve been here for more than eleven years and thus I have lived through much of what Dan Frank writes about in her recent book, The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.
I have not found many books written in English on Honduras and so I welcome this book. It is not a history per se, but it’s a work that combines research, advocacy, and personal experience.
Events are often related in a vacuum, with just statistics. Dr. Frank includes her own experiences accompanying people in Honduras and advocating for Honduras in US, even in the halls of Congress. This, very often, helps give a human face to statistics.
The work is clearly critical of the Honduran government and the US support of its repressive tactics, as well as of the Honduran political, social, and economic elites. This generally does not become an ideological rant, as I’ve found in some writers. I think her reflection on her many experiences with Hondurans provides a buffer to that temptation.
Her work is very well documented, with numerous footnotes.
This book helped me to reflect on these years in Honduras. I live in a relatively peaceful part of the country which, as I understand, lacks a long and deep history of political radicalism, like what can be found on the northern coast and in the larger cities. So I didn’t experience the repression to the extent that she did.
The book is worth a read – though I wonder if it will be understood well by those who don’t know the history of Honduras of this epoch.
We still need a few good histories and social analyses of the last twenty years of life in Honduras. Dr. Frank’s work is a start.
I have not found many books written in English on Honduras and so I welcome this book. It is not a history per se, but it’s a work that combines research, advocacy, and personal experience.
Events are often related in a vacuum, with just statistics. Dr. Frank includes her own experiences accompanying people in Honduras and advocating for Honduras in US, even in the halls of Congress. This, very often, helps give a human face to statistics.
The work is clearly critical of the Honduran government and the US support of its repressive tactics, as well as of the Honduran political, social, and economic elites. This generally does not become an ideological rant, as I’ve found in some writers. I think her reflection on her many experiences with Hondurans provides a buffer to that temptation.
Her work is very well documented, with numerous footnotes.
This book helped me to reflect on these years in Honduras. I live in a relatively peaceful part of the country which, as I understand, lacks a long and deep history of political radicalism, like what can be found on the northern coast and in the larger cities. So I didn’t experience the repression to the extent that she did.
The book is worth a read – though I wonder if it will be understood well by those who don’t know the history of Honduras of this epoch.
We still need a few good histories and social analyses of the last twenty years of life in Honduras. Dr. Frank’s work is a start.
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