jiujensu's reviews
453 reviews

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

sad medium-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land In Between by Hisham Matar

5.0

The Thorn and the Carnation by Yahya Al-Sinwar

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

This is the first half. It was smuggled out from prison. There's a dramatic message at the end about staying tuned for the translation of the second half. So wild to think about. I wish i had more info on how. Give it a read for that reason if for no other. But another reason is that if the US calls them a terrorist, there's a good chance there's a compelling story of a revolutionary growing up under occupation, apartheid, or something like that and/or learning to fight that power. 

https://annas-archive.org/md5/e9d7f17d739babed8f20e93ce62b581d

Or
https://t.co/iBiJk1Ewjp

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh

adventurous emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

As in the author's note, the Western media did not report the Syrian revolution with human stories or a way Western people even knew what was going on - as with most things that happen in the Middle East (SWANA). This book will help us with the human aspect as the author draws on real people to bring the story to life. 

The story starts out pretty good but halfway through, I loved it. Reality sinks in all at once for you as it does for Salama and it's crushing and beautiful.

The images of destruction, planes, death on a daily basis are so close to what's been in the news with the livestreamed US backed genocide of Palestinians by Israel, that that aspect was hard to read personally. I'm glad someone's telling the stories. Read it, though. And take care.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

5.0

I read this concurrently with the digital version. Review is there

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

challenging emotional informative medium-paced

5.0

Must of the interviews are focused around the last chapter of the book where he tells about his awakening on the Palestine issue that he started on a recent visit with a group from the Palestine Festival of Literature. (His talk with Rashid Khalidi at Palfest is on YouTube, excellent). He had written some things in A Case For Reparations that he wanted to correct after the trip. He's done there what many writers should be doing - going to the source. When you know better, you do better. He sort of makes you think throughout this chapter, though, that maybe he hasn't learned as much as he thinks (as represented by interviews) but by the end, he addresses that problem in thoughts on learning about Deir Yasin after retuning home.

But to ignore the rest of the book would be a huge mistake. He talks about falling in love with language, his trip to Senegal, identity, journalism, who has the right to tell the stories, something that has always interested me.

All in all, by the very end, great book. Though I'd be lying if i said I wasn't taking notes because I thought I was going to have to write a super critical review through most of the last chapter. He saved it in the end. 

The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

adventurous challenging emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

Historical fiction. This was a really good multigenerational story. Most of the drama was in the lives of the characters such that you'll learn about the Nakba and Israeli violence in an organic way. The consequences of displacement are more far reaching than people might expect and the characters all handle it differently. 

If you are reading this in 2024, the events in the story will hit even harder. The events in the book occurred before 2013. In 2014, Israel launched a seven day offensive with much death and destruction. So you keep thinking - but as bad as this is, they have no idea what's in store if they survive this. 

So even a happy ending for the characters in the short term ends up uncertain. I can't fathom how they'd fare in this wave of genocide. Or does the sadness lie in the fact that we do know? We are watching the genocide livestreamed. Buried in the rubble, limbs blown off. Get to a hospital with life threatening injuries, death by bombing. Run to a school, death by bombing. Stand in line for food, death by bombing. Walk outside to get water, death by sniper. Call for help like Hind, get shot 355 times. Write a poem like Refaat, death by bombing. Go south, go north, go here, go there where we absolutely won't bomb, death by bombing. Get rounded up, zip tied and shot to death. Help an injured person in the street, death by sniper. Watch soldiers throw flour and food from your home at each other while wearing your bra and jewelry while you starve to death because Israel won't allow aid in - and has deemed the aid workers' organizations terrorists via coerced false confessions extracted by waterboarding.

The next chapters of these Nakba stories I absolutely dread. But you need to read them. We have to stop Israel in this inhumanity, occupation, apartheid, genocide. 

The Twilight Zone Haiku by Chad Ellis Boykin

informative inspiring lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

5.0

If you like Twilight Zone and or poetry, you NEED this book. It's a creative new way to experience our favorite franchise. I recommend you read it with a rewatch. It's fun by itself but you can make it interactive and write your own. The best art inspires more art.

We Won't Be Here Tomorrow: And Other Stories by Margaret Killjoy

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Spooky, haunting stuff with an anarchist undercurrent. Not your average short stories. Asheville and the Appalachian Mountains feature in some of the stories and there are more gay and trans characters than I've encountered before. There's a little dystopia, fantasy, sci-fi, ghost story. I loved this collection. 

My faves are: Imagine a World So Forgiving, Everything That Isn't Winter, Into the Gray, It Bleeds, It Burrows, It Breaks the Bone. 

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham

informative sad medium-paced

4.0

I think I preferred Svetlana Alexievitch's Voices of Chernobyl to this one. She wrote four, including War's Unwomanly Face, that are made of more personal accounts of big wars/disasters in Russian history. 

But this one probably addressed the sequence of events and causes more directly.