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A review by ninjamuse
Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny by Witold Szabłowski
3.0
In brief: An exploration and critique of Eastern European (and other post-communist) lives, told largely through scenes and conversations.
Thoughts: What struck me most about reading this was the structure, and the way Szabłowski comes at his themes sideways. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like that, though it’s very reminiscent of long-form articles—lay out the facts, quote people, and let the readers draw their own conclusions. It’s a lovely mix of tragedy and hope and condemnation, with a very powerful analogy pinning it all together: the dancing bears.
The first half of this book focuses on the problem of the Balkans’ dancing bears. Szabłowski interviews some of the Roma who kept the bears, as well as the people devoted to taking the bears to a nature park, and in doing so exposes a lot of systemic flaws and racism and apathy, and poses some hard questions. What do you do when a traditional way of life is animal abuse? How do you help people transition from one way of life to another? Is the park the truly better option, and for whom?
In the second half, he takes the questions he’s asked (by which I mean invited the reader to ask through judicious reporting), and applies it to snapshots of people struggling to survive after the collapse of communism. How do you solve mass unemployment? Poverty and infrastructure problems? If people have lived their lives without needing to make major decisions, or learning about the glory of their government, how do they cope when that’s taken away? And again, there are flaws and racism and apathy, laid uncomfortably bare.
Szabłowski has a very fine and precise way of seeing and reporting things, whether he’s talking to a woman who chose homelessness in London over poverty in Poland, the hitchhikers he picks up in Cuba, the drivers who pick him up in Kosovo, or the Greeks protesting austerity. He has an equally light touch in his writing. This could’ve been a much darker or denser book, but he keeps the descriptions brief and sticks to dialogue more often than not.
So: this is an easy but very thought-provoking read. I think it might hit more for someone with Eastern European heritage than it did for me, but it still opened my eyes to truths and the questions it raised are going to stick with me. That said, I’m dithering on a rating for it. Content-wise, it’s clearly an 8, but my gut/quality gauge says it’s closer to a 7. Either way, it’s worth the read.
7.5/10
Contains: anti-Roma slurs from an author who really does know better*, reported racism towards Roma peoples, animal abuse, people with unsavory attitudes towards poverty and homelessness, the glory of Joseph Stalin
* or shoddy translation, but even so
Thoughts: What struck me most about reading this was the structure, and the way Szabłowski comes at his themes sideways. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like that, though it’s very reminiscent of long-form articles—lay out the facts, quote people, and let the readers draw their own conclusions. It’s a lovely mix of tragedy and hope and condemnation, with a very powerful analogy pinning it all together: the dancing bears.
The first half of this book focuses on the problem of the Balkans’ dancing bears. Szabłowski interviews some of the Roma who kept the bears, as well as the people devoted to taking the bears to a nature park, and in doing so exposes a lot of systemic flaws and racism and apathy, and poses some hard questions. What do you do when a traditional way of life is animal abuse? How do you help people transition from one way of life to another? Is the park the truly better option, and for whom?
In the second half, he takes the questions he’s asked (by which I mean invited the reader to ask through judicious reporting), and applies it to snapshots of people struggling to survive after the collapse of communism. How do you solve mass unemployment? Poverty and infrastructure problems? If people have lived their lives without needing to make major decisions, or learning about the glory of their government, how do they cope when that’s taken away? And again, there are flaws and racism and apathy, laid uncomfortably bare.
Szabłowski has a very fine and precise way of seeing and reporting things, whether he’s talking to a woman who chose homelessness in London over poverty in Poland, the hitchhikers he picks up in Cuba, the drivers who pick him up in Kosovo, or the Greeks protesting austerity. He has an equally light touch in his writing. This could’ve been a much darker or denser book, but he keeps the descriptions brief and sticks to dialogue more often than not.
So: this is an easy but very thought-provoking read. I think it might hit more for someone with Eastern European heritage than it did for me, but it still opened my eyes to truths and the questions it raised are going to stick with me. That said, I’m dithering on a rating for it. Content-wise, it’s clearly an 8, but my gut/quality gauge says it’s closer to a 7. Either way, it’s worth the read.
7.5/10
Contains: anti-Roma slurs from an author who really does know better*, reported racism towards Roma peoples, animal abuse, people with unsavory attitudes towards poverty and homelessness, the glory of Joseph Stalin
* or shoddy translation, but even so