deathbedxcv's reviews
55 reviews

Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona

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4.0

“The only thing they in common is the Fear. That’s what he calls it, anyway. Because it’s big enough and scary enough to be set apart from any old fear with a lowercase f. They’ve always been afraid-the both of them. Inexplicably. Afraid of losing. Afraid of being left behind. Going back to the way things were. Isn’t that how all brothers and sisters go? Different every which way and yet so very, very much the same.”

The central story of Emily Ruth Verona’s “Midnight on Beacon Street” takes place at the Mazinski household on Friday, 10/15/1993 to minutes into Saturday, 10/16/1993 and changes perspectives between Amy, who is babysitting Eleanor’s children, and Ben, who is the youngest child and Mira’s little brother. Amy is babysitting Eleanor’s children while she’s out on a date. Eleanor and her children recently escaped an abusive household so they are very close knit. Amy exhibits extreme anxiety and Ben does too, although his is early and Amy sees a lot of herself in him. Mira is a bit more closed off and very protective of her brother, even if she tries not to show it. The secondary story takes place in 6 years ago when Amy herself is being babysat by Sadie. It’s during this time that Amy’s anxiety gets stronger and Sadie gives her advice on how to deal with it.

I was totally surprised by the suspense in this book. It really is a page turner in the sense that you think you know what’s going to happen, but in takes an extreme turn. You want to keep reading. Ruth Verona does an incredible job at giving me the chills. Especially during the 18 minutes before midnight. Of all the things that could’ve happened, I did not see that coming.

I can def see this becoming a movie.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

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5.0

“As soon as you and your fellow men are cut down like dogs there is no other solution but to use every means available to reestablish your weight as a human being.”

Is a sentence taken from the Colonial War and Mental Disorders section of Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth.” And I choose to highlight it in this summary because I believe this truly gets to the point of what Fanon is advocating. The only response to being oppressed is violence, and the only way to true freedom is through violence. Revolution is violent because the colonizer makes its violent. Decolonization is violent because the colonizer gave the colonized no other choice, so they will strive for their freedom by any means necessary.

It’s very easy to call Fanon’s 1961 collection of essays a seminal text, and can be easily proven given how influential it is in many leftist circles, but what’s surprising is seeing how much of this text can be connected to what’s happening today within Palestine. (And by surprising I mean not surprising at all, since history is cyclical). The Palestinian people have been oppressed and colonized by Israel for over 8 decades. Forgive me for the hard words and trigger warning but there is no other way to say it, but the Palestinian people have been abused, beaten, raped, robbed, and many times obliterated by the Israeli government. And you expect them to take that shit nicely? Did people expect the Mau mau or the Algerian revolution to be non violent?

Fanon studied medicine and psychiatry, so he illustrates decolonization not only as a physical act with physical means and consequences but also in the mental. Fanon studied the effects of colonization and decolonization on the oppressed and the oppressor. Here is a qoute from a Frenchman with anxiety disorder whose civil servant father was killed in an ambush; “Every time I went home my father would tell me a new batch of people had been arrested. In the end I no longer dared go out in the street, I was so sure I’d encounter hatred everywhere I looked. Deep down I knew the Algerians were right. If I were Algerian I’d join the resistance movement.” And here is an exchange between Fanon and a 14 year old Algerian boy who murdered his European playmate;

“‘Child: In your opinion, what do you think we should have done?

Fanon: I don’t know. But you are a child and the things that are going on are for grown-ups.

Child: But they kill children too.’”

Fanon illustrates the psyché of both sides and he comes to the conclusion that for true revolution we must be willing to use force, and we must stray away from the idea of wanting to become like the oppressor. As Fanon states, “Let us decide not to imitate Europe and let us tense our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us endeavor to invent a man in full, something which Europe has been incapable of achieving.”
Letters to a Young Poet: With the Letters to Rilke from the ''young Poet'' by Franz Xaver Kappus, Rainer Maria Rilke

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4.0

An interesting read…where one would think correspondences between an established writer and a young poet to be about craft is actually about everything but craft…who is the established writer and the young poet of my life of my world? These exchanges between RMR and FXK seem to put me in an introspective mood