![]() ![]() But no, the main subject is Christianity, the church of the times, that says be glad to suffer in life that you will be welcomed into heaven. Stephen Greenblatt’s “The Swerve.” The main subject is the book, actually a poem, known to us as “On the Nature of Things,” by the Roman Lucretius, who believed there are no gods, we are simply very small “things,” atoms, put together temporarily as a person. A rare and beautiful poem that dispels all shadows. One poem, “Should the Fox Come Again to My Cabin in the Snow,” deserves its own paragraph, it is so clear, cleansing and of the present, so done with all the old baskets of events but still so loving of life, that in some magical way of words it dignifies both the writer and the reader. The better, then, to live in the present. ![]() This present volume, “Winter,” speaks strongly of the years past, events in her life dark or delicious, what is I imagine a matter of age, feeling that they need to be remembered and then put to sleep. Patricia Fargnoli’s “Winter.” Fargnoli has been the poet laureate of New Hampshire and has received a goodly number of additional awards. In my mind this book will become an everlasting story. There are many characters, more than a few threads to be followed, both of horror and courage. Not only for the very moving story itself, but for the writing - I felt as if I were standing in front of the house of language, which had just had a fresh coat of paint. Junot Díaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”Īnthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See.” I am sure many readers before me have held this book in their hands and been astonished, and yet I can’t forgo to speak a little of my own praise. Starkly drawn, boldly told, “Ghetto Brother” is a gem. But like the borough in which it is set, “Ghetto Brother” contains multitudes: The book is also a history of the multiracial Bronx, of its black and Puerto Rican communities, of its youth gangs, of hip-hop’s rise from the gang truce that Benjy helped to forge, and finally it is the story of Benjy’s awakening to his family’s hidden Jewish faith. ![]() As a primer for the Black Lives Matter movement and as a meditation on the death-grip that white supremacy has on the American soul, “They Can’t Kill Us All” is essential reading.Īnd then there is Julian Voloj and Claudia Ahlering’s superb graphic history “Ghetto Brother,” which on the surface is a biography of Benjy Melendez, the Boricua brother who in the late ’60s founded one of the Bronx’s most notorious gangs: the Ghetto Brothers. Lowery more or less pulls the sheet off America, exposing the malign disavowals and horrendous racial structures and logics that make the unjust deaths of young men like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Sean Bell not only possible but inevitable. In his quest to understand how and why this movement sprang up when it did, Lowery seems to have been everywhere and spoken to everyone (his interview of Alicia Garza is especially noteworthy). The first was Wesley Lowery’s “They Can’t Kill Us All,” a devastating front-line account of the police killings and the young activism that sparked one of the most significant racial justice movements since the 1960s: Black Lives Matter. Two excellent books accompanied me through the darkness of these last months. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |