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bargainbinkazbrekker's reviews
850 reviews
If You Still Recognize Me by Cynthia So
3.5
A quick, fun, and sweet read. An incredible addition to the YA Contemporary Romance genre!
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer
4.25
“… and I can’t help feeling that we’re using modernity in the best possible way: to work together and to heal what was broken.”
There’s not a lot of books that deal with the genocide of a people that take the time to highlight how those people adapted and continue to survive. Countless books written about the indigenous peoples of America focus on the tragedy, the death and apparent eradication. They write like indigenous peoples do not exist today. But they do, they’ve always been here and they continue to be here. Despite how hard America tried, they could never truly kill off the native populations.
There’s not a lot of books that deal with the genocide of a people that take the time to highlight how those people adapted and continue to survive. Countless books written about the indigenous peoples of America focus on the tragedy, the death and apparent eradication. They write like indigenous peoples do not exist today. But they do, they’ve always been here and they continue to be here. Despite how hard America tried, they could never truly kill off the native populations.
this is a book that doesn’t ignore the bloody history of native groups and America but instead of focusing on the death focuses on how groups fought back and survived, how they continue to take back what was stolen from them. This is a book ultimately filled with hope, hope for the indigenous future instead of solely highlighting indigenous death and misery.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
4.25
“ I did not know that how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying healed and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when i saw them with eyes still young. And I can see something see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there.” — Black Elk
My biggest issue with reading history books is that a lot of them present the facts and events in a very matter of fact way, like it is what it is and what happened happened. There’s never room really for nuance or emotion. Which I think is a detriment. History is nuanced and history is emotional. History is learning how people suffered, died, killed, created, learned, built, inspired, etc. History is human and humans are emotional complex creatures. And some historical events deserve to have their emotions felt. The systemic genocide of the Indigenous peoples of America is one that i feel people need and have to understand and feel the emotion— the pain— that these groups have suffered. The betrayal, lost hope, grief, suffering, anger, and loss they felt. People need to understand that these unique groups were forced to unite under the same circumstances if they were being forced from their homes, their cultures were being stripped from them, and their people murdered.
Bury my Heart at wounded knee showcases the demise of many a different tribe. It shows the unfortunate cycle that they all ended up in and how the white man did everything they could to rid the land of its natives.
it’s heartbreaking, it’s brutal, and it’s infuriatingly repetitive.
Hurt You by Marie Myung-Ok Lee
3.25
I knew i wasn’t going to necessarily enjoy this book going into it but i still read it because i was interested to see how the author would tackle a book like Steinbeck’s Of mice and men. It’s one of those books that thousands have had to read and it holds a place as one of those infamous yet deeply problematic classics. Tackling a classic that’s over arching theme and plot is based in ableism and borderline eugenics is a challenge in if itself, by itself, and that’s where this book lost me. It was tackling so much in so few pages: Ableism, Gun violence, Gun control, School shootings, White Supremacy in spaces and communities of color, Familial strain, violences against disabled people, and advocacy. I was getting whiplash from trying to understand what the author was trying to say about each and every social issue but there was just not enough time and pages to get a fully fleshed out understanding of the authors full message.
The novel did manage to handle its disabled character with so much more respect and autonomy than the original text and Georgia is an excellent main character to follow, even if i was iffy about following an able bodied protagonist who basically speaks for our disabled character, Leo. But it’s handled respectfully and you can feel how much Georgia loves and cares for Leo, and how she takes time to understand him and his commutation style, etc.
I think this would’ve have been a fantastic novel for me had the author either limited the amount of social issues they attempted to address or hand more pages to expand on each of them to give them the nuance and time they deserve.
I’m sitting at a solid 3 to 3.25 out of 5 stars. It’s good, but I have a couple qualms.