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A review by weaselweader
Blood: The Stuff of Life by Lawrence Hill
5.0
It is always a pleasure to find non-fiction that qualifies as a gripping page turner!
If Lawrence Hill’s Blood were a musical composition, one might characterize it as a brilliant, free-wheeling and far-ranging improvisation on a single note – that single theme note (well, it’s obvious, isn’t it!) is “blood”! A couple of random quotations might serve better to illustrate Hill’s eclectic intent in pulling together such a disparate collection of essays. For example, consider this tidbit from the close of the first chapter:
“Blood, indeed, filters into every aspect of our language and defines who we are: in our emotional states, in our social ranking, in our state of innocence or moral guilt, and most important of all, in our relationships to each other.”
“Blood is truly the stuff of life: a bold and enduring determinant of identity, race, gender, culture, citizenship, belonging, privilege, deprivation, athletic superiority and nationhood. It is so vital to our sense of ourselves, our abilities, and our possibilities for survival that we have invested money, time, and energy in learning how to manipulate its very composition.”
and an excerpt of the description of Hill’s CBC Massey Lecture that formed the kernel from which he created Blood:
“Blood: The Stuff of Life is a bold meditation on blood as an historical and contemporary marker of identity, belonging, gender, race, class, citizenship, athletic superiority and nationhood.”
Racism; persecution, blood sacrifices and religion; the imaginative ways that athletes, their coaches and their doctors have devised to cheat in sports; misogyny, feminism and menstruation; blood diseases; tainted blood, homosexuality and blood transfusions; the history of the science of blood; blood in mythology; the cultural definitions of “being” black, Jewish or aboriginal; genocide; entertainment and the public thirst for blood and gore; the popularity of vampires in today’s literature – well, I think you get the idea. The breadth of topics that Hill touches on is almost dizzying in its eclecticism.
On virtually every line of every page, Blood:The Stuff of Life is informative, entertaining, provocative, thoughtful and – that element so often missing from drier and less well-executed non-fiction – it is compelling.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
If Lawrence Hill’s Blood were a musical composition, one might characterize it as a brilliant, free-wheeling and far-ranging improvisation on a single note – that single theme note (well, it’s obvious, isn’t it!) is “blood”! A couple of random quotations might serve better to illustrate Hill’s eclectic intent in pulling together such a disparate collection of essays. For example, consider this tidbit from the close of the first chapter:
“Blood, indeed, filters into every aspect of our language and defines who we are: in our emotional states, in our social ranking, in our state of innocence or moral guilt, and most important of all, in our relationships to each other.”
“Blood is truly the stuff of life: a bold and enduring determinant of identity, race, gender, culture, citizenship, belonging, privilege, deprivation, athletic superiority and nationhood. It is so vital to our sense of ourselves, our abilities, and our possibilities for survival that we have invested money, time, and energy in learning how to manipulate its very composition.”
and an excerpt of the description of Hill’s CBC Massey Lecture that formed the kernel from which he created Blood:
“Blood: The Stuff of Life is a bold meditation on blood as an historical and contemporary marker of identity, belonging, gender, race, class, citizenship, athletic superiority and nationhood.”
Racism; persecution, blood sacrifices and religion; the imaginative ways that athletes, their coaches and their doctors have devised to cheat in sports; misogyny, feminism and menstruation; blood diseases; tainted blood, homosexuality and blood transfusions; the history of the science of blood; blood in mythology; the cultural definitions of “being” black, Jewish or aboriginal; genocide; entertainment and the public thirst for blood and gore; the popularity of vampires in today’s literature – well, I think you get the idea. The breadth of topics that Hill touches on is almost dizzying in its eclecticism.
On virtually every line of every page, Blood:The Stuff of Life is informative, entertaining, provocative, thoughtful and – that element so often missing from drier and less well-executed non-fiction – it is compelling.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss