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wombatjenni 's review for:
Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII
by Judith Schiess Avila, Chester Nez
I always feel bad about rating someone's bafflingly interesting life story less than 5 stars, so let me just say this: everyone should read this book for the facts. I mean, holey moley, what a life did Chester Nez lead! From being placed in schools where teachers pretty much tried to beat the Navajo out of him to becoming an incredibly valued asset for the US military during WWII because he spoke Navajo, to returning back home to the country he had risked his life for to find out that he was barely granted citizenship rights and certainly not looked kindly at.
Absolutely fascinating.
The reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because I didn't feel this... hard-to-describe joy of reading, which happens regardless of the topic, when something has been written in a certain narrative style or a way. Like many memoirs or autobiographical accounts that are written with a certain urgency (Chester Nez was getting old!), the memoir falls into the safe tracks of chronology, of the "then we did this, and then we did that, and when that was over, it was time to..." It almost does not give Chester Nez's story the pregnant pause it deserves every now and then to really digest it, although the chapters do end in a common cliffhanger trick from the memoir tool box. (The "...but little did I know that everything would change" turn the page type.)
Absolutely fascinating.
The reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because I didn't feel this... hard-to-describe joy of reading, which happens regardless of the topic, when something has been written in a certain narrative style or a way. Like many memoirs or autobiographical accounts that are written with a certain urgency (Chester Nez was getting old!), the memoir falls into the safe tracks of chronology, of the "then we did this, and then we did that, and when that was over, it was time to..." It almost does not give Chester Nez's story the pregnant pause it deserves every now and then to really digest it, although the chapters do end in a common cliffhanger trick from the memoir tool box. (The "...but little did I know that everything would change" turn the page type.)