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prairiephlox 's review for:
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick
Nothing to Envy was one of the most remarkable tales I’ve ever read. I know next to nothing about Asian cultures, history, etc. This was a real eye opener to me for one small, isolated country.
This book totally took over my life. Every night my husband and I walk our dogs for about an hour, and I couldn’t even help but tell him everything I had learned that day from the book. “And can you even imagine the lights going out in your country? Westerners are constantly writing these *scifi dystopian* works, but there is nothing fiction about it, it’s happened, people had to watch it happen!” and “The names for these things just SOUND HORRIBLE: ideological training, The People’s Community Standards Brigade.” And “Can you believe that you have to get permission from your work group to get a watch, or anything? They have to stay late on Fridays to confess their *sins* type of thing, they say how they aren’t being a good communist and stuff.” We would spend the whole hour on these sorts of topics- why isn’t America doing anything? Why did we allow countries to be split in the first place? How could we ever successfully join the countries back together if the regime fell? We talked about literature, 1984, modern retellings of dystopias and how they compared, how indoctrination worked and the different ways people do it, and whether Kim Il-Sung knew he was killing his people. Sometimes our conversations would get entirely side-tracked and it would start with North Korea and land on whether or not we would willingly go to colonize Mars and what sort of culture another planet would create, even if it was humans. Or, we would talk about how the average North Korean is five inches shorter than the average South Korean due to constant and persistent malnourishment, we’d talk about the Romans confronting the Germans for the first time, and how many generations in space it would take for humans to look different. If nothing else, you should read this book for the amazing conversation starter it is.
And then, after reading books like this, I have to wonder why this isn’t read in high schools? It’s written by a journalist, and so the method of storytelling is simple, but it is compelling. Its succinct, it’s not verbose, it might be repetitive, but it’s never dry. I think she did an amazing job weaving these stories together, fairly, with a look at all different walks of life in North Korea. This book would be perfect for high schools because it raises thought provoking questions about political use of the media, WWII imperialist ideologies, a look at the cold war, there is just so much you could do with this book.
I don’t want to give too much away, because these people’s stories need to be experienced . I can’t imagine that you would regret reading this book. Your head will most likely be splitting afterwards with more facts than you’ve ever even thought you could know about this mysterious little country. I know that I will never think or look at that country the same way again and now, any times NK is in the news, I know my attention will pick up.
This book totally took over my life. Every night my husband and I walk our dogs for about an hour, and I couldn’t even help but tell him everything I had learned that day from the book. “And can you even imagine the lights going out in your country? Westerners are constantly writing these *scifi dystopian* works, but there is nothing fiction about it, it’s happened, people had to watch it happen!” and “The names for these things just SOUND HORRIBLE: ideological training, The People’s Community Standards Brigade.” And “Can you believe that you have to get permission from your work group to get a watch, or anything? They have to stay late on Fridays to confess their *sins* type of thing, they say how they aren’t being a good communist and stuff.” We would spend the whole hour on these sorts of topics- why isn’t America doing anything? Why did we allow countries to be split in the first place? How could we ever successfully join the countries back together if the regime fell? We talked about literature, 1984, modern retellings of dystopias and how they compared, how indoctrination worked and the different ways people do it, and whether Kim Il-Sung knew he was killing his people. Sometimes our conversations would get entirely side-tracked and it would start with North Korea and land on whether or not we would willingly go to colonize Mars and what sort of culture another planet would create, even if it was humans. Or, we would talk about how the average North Korean is five inches shorter than the average South Korean due to constant and persistent malnourishment, we’d talk about the Romans confronting the Germans for the first time, and how many generations in space it would take for humans to look different. If nothing else, you should read this book for the amazing conversation starter it is.
And then, after reading books like this, I have to wonder why this isn’t read in high schools? It’s written by a journalist, and so the method of storytelling is simple, but it is compelling. Its succinct, it’s not verbose, it might be repetitive, but it’s never dry. I think she did an amazing job weaving these stories together, fairly, with a look at all different walks of life in North Korea. This book would be perfect for high schools because it raises thought provoking questions about political use of the media, WWII imperialist ideologies, a look at the cold war, there is just so much you could do with this book.
I don’t want to give too much away, because these people’s stories need to be experienced . I can’t imagine that you would regret reading this book. Your head will most likely be splitting afterwards with more facts than you’ve ever even thought you could know about this mysterious little country. I know that I will never think or look at that country the same way again and now, any times NK is in the news, I know my attention will pick up.