May's theme: "The Wildnerness"

May's theme is "The Wilderness", I interpreted this broadly and chose to read "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver.

I LOVED THIS BOOK!

There are many reasons I loved this book. It has subversive feminism, critiques of colonialism, and the struggle for survival.Without giving too many spoilers here is my mini-summary:

The main characters in this book are a Baptist family. This book takes place starting in 1960, and this family in many ways represents stereotypical white families of the South; in this family, Dad is IN CHARGE. He is a Baptist preacher and decides that the whole family, four daughters included, needs to move to The Congo to "save souls". He takes this quite literally from the evangelical perspective, everyone in The Congo that has not accepted Jesus as their personal savior is going straight to hell, thus, he views their mission as imperative and they are doing all the Congolese a favor.

In this book the jungle of The Congo is almost a character in itself because the jungle frequently thwarts the efforts of the people who live there and try to control it and exerts a powerful influence psychologically on everyone there. The forest shapes their behavior and seems to have a will of it's own.

The main events of the book unfold as the family tries to continue their mission even has civil war descends into their village. Everyone in the family copes with this a different way - in contrast to how they started all on the same page.

I very much enjoyed how this book tells the story from each female character's point of view. LOVED THAT.

Now that I have written about this book, I AM READY TO READ IT AGAIN! It was great! I have heard from other friends who didn't care for it as much and there were times I was frustrated with it because I thought the dad was being such a tool it was difficult to read. The colonial issues can be difficult to read as well but I found myself often reflecting on how colonialism promotes the values of the domineering culture but too, how even when reacting to colonialism (our reactions to it) even often promotes the domineering culture's values. For example, you SHOULD be pissed off reading about how Western cultures have taken advantage of many, many, African cultures, YET we DO NOT know what is best for those cultures now. We didn't know then, we don't know now. We can't tell people how to fix the problems - even if we started them - because that is promoting our own values again, not theirs.

Also loved the subversive feminism of this book. I don't think any of these characters would call themselves that but certainly they were. But, don't want to give you any spoilers :)

Summary: READ IT, FIVE out of FIVE STARS!!!!!

Far From the Tree: The Final Entry

It is with pleasure that I have wrapped up this book. Often when I end a book this excellent it is bittersweet, but this book has given me so much to chew on I am sure I will be revisiting it time and time again. Especially as I go on to be a parent myself.

This post covers the remaining three chapters: Criminality, Transgender &0; Father.

Criminality:
I found this chapter to be an especially interesting one in terms of the philosophical meeting the practical. Here is an example of how this dynamic comes together: Juvenile delinquents have a recidivism rate of 93%, adding mandated family therapy drops this to 60% (so quoted in the book). YET, in most states family therapy is not part of the package. Even though it saves tons of money and heartache in both the short and long run. BUT because we want "punishment" we don't want to give people therapy, that seems too much like a positive, a possible reward. I find myself caught in this conflict at times as well. As much as I truly despise how much we incarcerate people in this country and the damage it does to them psychologically, I am really unsure as to what the alternatives are. In the case of juveniles I think the answer is more clear, adolescents and children are much more malleable to change and we should be throwing as many resources at them as we can. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is not to say that adults aren't worth rehabilitating as well, I think it is just less clear what works in that case.

There were several really interesting stories in this chapter, including a family where the son had molested his own niece but had been rehabilitated, a chronic offender gang banger, and parents of one of the Columbine killers. The Klebolds, parents of Dylan Klebold one of the teens who killed his classmates at Columbine, were exceptionally brave and insightful in sharing their story. A theme of this chapter, and especially for the Klebolds is how much opprobrium (author's word) parents of juvenile delinquents face.

Transgender:
My knowledge of this is from two main perspectives: Oprah and Child Psychology. In child psychology I was really struck by learning how intersex children and the really terrible ways medical science (and our culture) has dealt with their gender variance. Until reading this chapter I largely thought of transgender issues in terms of adults and adolescents wanting to transition but this chapter shared the tales of many very YOUNG children who were transgender. I find this really fascinating, having watched my own brother become very into being "a BOY" at quite a young age, it does make sense that a feeling of mismatch with your gender begins so young but it is startling how well these children can articulate that.

Father:
Similar to the chapter son, this chapter focuses on the authors own experiences and related to that, was one of my least favorite chapters. I did like this more than the chapter "son" because it did wrap things up.

THE END!!!

EVERYONE GO READ THIS AMAZING BOOK!

It is quite a tome but WELL WORTH IT!