Memoir of an NBC Editor Containing Hawaiian Issues

Since I don't have any requests from authors, editors or publicists at the moment, I decided to review a memoir with the title of Local by an NBC editor who is part Native Hawaiian. Her name is Jessica Machado which clearly isn't a Native Hawaiian name.  I selected her book as my December Amazon First Read which I downloaded for free, and finished on January 30.  I love its colorful cover.

                              

Native Hawaiians call themselves Kanaka.  They are distinguished from those who either are settlers in Hawaii from the U.S. mainland, or those who are descended from these settlers.  Machado refers to settlers as locals.  Yet I imagine her own self-identification is complex due to her mixed heritage.  

When Machado was called "Haole",which is the Hawaiian term for settlers from the U.S. mainland, she was upset.  Yet it occurred to me that Machado's heritage is primarily Haole.  Her mother was 100% Haole from Shreveport, Louisiana.  Machado learned to speak with her mother's Southern accent.  Her father was part Kanaka and part Portuguese. Yet his Kanaka ancestry wasn't on his birth certificate.  Her part-Kanaka heritage wasn't on his daughter's birth certificate either.  She still identifies as part-Kanaka.

 The overwhelming majority of the content of this book doesn't deal with either politics or Hawaiian culture.  Actually, 95% of this book didn't interest me. As a result of Local 's emphasis on personal events , I wasn't aware that Machado is currently an editor at NBC News until I saw her profile on Goodreads after I had finished reading the book.   

Local has inspired me to read further about Kanaka culture.  I have found books dealing with Kanaka philosophy that are available in libraries.  I would like to investigate their approaches.

I learned from this book that the word "Aloha" isn't just a greeting.  It's a concept that is found in all Polynesian languages. See the Wikipedia article on Aloha here.

Another significant Hawaiian concept is "Ohana".   Machado doesn't really define Ohana.  She thinks of it as a feeling that's associated with family. There are many Ohana graphics celebrating Ohana and family on the internet.   Here's one I particularly liked.

                                  

 

I also liked the extended family and sense of community definition of Ohana that I found at Dictionary.com  here.

 When Machado went to London for her sophomore year of college, she called her father saying she felt alone.  Her father told her that she needed to get used to it.  "All you have in life is yourself."  She felt that was anti-Ohana, but she thought it was true. (I think that someone's attitude about attachment or alienation is a choice, and that it's not a permanent one.  I've vacillated between feeling contentedly immersed in a community and feeling totally apart from community.)

Machado does discuss Hawaii's past and how it became what it is today.  A significant event in Hawaiian history was King Kalakaua being forced to sign a document known as The Bayonet Constitution  on July 6, 1887.  The Bayonet Constitution gave the King less power and restricted the rights of Kanaka voters. 

There is a Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Machado briefly discusses it and Kay Trask, a prominent activist in that movement.  I read a brief memorial account of Trask's  life after she passed away in 2021 here.  Machado asked her father what he thought about Hawaiian sovereignty.  He said that it was too late for that.  I don't think it is too late.  Hawaiians can still choose to unite behind the sovereignty movement.  They can have sovereignty rallies.  They can hold an election. An island choosing sovereignty after having been colonized hasn't always worked out well (e.g. Haiti), but I think the Hawaiian traditions of Aloha and Ohana are advantages that could potentially lead to a peaceful and prosperous future for a sovereign Hawaii.  Of course, the future of Hawaii should be up to the majority of Hawaiians.

                                       

 

 

 

 

 

Land of Careful Shadows--Police Procedural Dealing With Illegal Immigrants

 It took me ten days to read my first book of the year.  Since I'm hoping to read more in 2023 than I had in 2022, that isn't good news.  Maybe I'll pick up the pace with the next novel.  I got Land of Careful Shadows by Suzanne Chazin from the library.   I'm glad to get a chance to read a book I chose myself for a change.

I selected the only mystery on the tops of my library book piles.  I like to start months with a mystery when I can, so I can be sure to have at least one mystery to discuss at the mystery book club that I attend on Zoom.

                                     

This police procedural begins with Detective Vega being stopped by a rookie who didn't know who he was.  In case there are readers who don't know, detectives don't wear uniforms.  Detective Greco tells him he should have let the rookie know he was a cop.  "Not that he was profiling me or anything," Vega responded sarcastically.  Of course the rookie had been profiling him.   

Prejudice, particularly prejudice against immigrants, is a significant theme in this book.  The victim is an illegal immigrant, but Vega wasn't going to bury the case.  Yet a local cop who had responded to a domestic violence incident, didn't arrest the abuser probably because the case involved an immigrant couple.  He didn't care enough about an immigrant woman getting abused.

 This book takes place in a small town in upstate New York, and the characters tend to be inter-related in some way.  For example, Linda, who is originally mentioned as Vega's girlfriend when he was a teenager, turns out to be significant to the plot because she's married to a major character.

Since a quinceanera is a plot event, I learned more about this Latino equivalent to a Jewish bar/bat mitzvah.   I knew that it happens when a Latino girl turns fifteen.

 Among Jews this rite of passage was originally for boys.  The first bat mitzvah was in 1922 for the daughter of Mordechai Kaplan.  He was the founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist sect. 

 I looked up the origin of the quinceanera and discovered that it originated from ancient practices of the cultures of Latin America which means that it's a good deal older than the bar mitzvah for boys which wasn't practiced widely among Jews until the 17th century. 

One thing that bothered me about this quinceanera was that the cake was flanked by Barbie dolls.  Although I had Barbie dolls as a young girl, I now think that Barbie dolls are an oppressive aspiration for girls.  No real girl or woman can ever look like a Barbie doll.  The struggle to reach this unattainable "ideal" can result in potentially dangerous eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.  I knew someone in college who was hospitalized due to anorexia.  No girl should risk her life for what is essentially a stereotype.

I was interested in author Chazin's idea that an accident is the opposite of murder because a murder is planned, but an accident is sudden.  Land of Careful Shadows contains both deliberate murder and a pivotal accident that seem to both bookend the storyline, and upend it. I was satisfied with the ending.  When I got to that point, it seemed fated.  The opposites complemented each other.  

Mysteries are often called puzzles.  The puzzle pieces may appear disparate but when the plot of a good mystery reaches its conclusion, they all fit together neatly.  So in this case, murder and accident belonged together.  They weren't really opposites after all.

                              

 

                                             

 

My 2022 Retrospective

                                                              

I discovered that there had been 56,041 total views for this blog at the end of 2021.  There are now 64,387 views. This means that there were 8,346 views in 2022. 

The Goodreads statistics that I am including in this post are:

40 reads recorded on my profile for 2022

4 reads with a five star rating.

 

Below are my five star reads from 2022 which are the recipients of:

The Golden Mask Awards

Disability Pride by Ben Mattlin

I thought this was an interesting and insightful book, though I sometimes had a hard time figuring out what Mattlin intended to say.

How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walters

I learned a great deal from this book including that a country in the middle zone between democracy and autocracy is called an anocracy.

Disposable People by Kevin Bales

To many the existence of contemporary slavery is a shocker.  It's illegal, but that doesn't prevent it from existing.

Pelosi by Molly Ball

Looking back on how much Pelosi has accomplished through the pages of this biography felt very worthwhile to me.

Please note that there is no fiction among my top reads.  This is because there was no five star fiction in 2022.

Although my top reads were extraordinary, I read fewer books than the previous year which was disappointing.

 

               

                         

A Tempest of Death: A Terrifying Historical Novel

  Book Whisperer, a website for indie authors, asked me to review this book.  They contacted me on behalf of the author, Peter V. Wright.  My time for blogging is more limited these days.  I started A Tempest of Death on November 12 and finished it November 30. 

 

                               

There were medieval and 20th century viewpoint characters in this novel.  I was grateful that the chapter headings with dates allowed me to keep track of when I was chronologically.

On the other hand, there was too much unnecessary history to wade through.  I might have finished this book sooner if there hadn't been so much historical information to record in my journal that I thought might be relevant for this review.

A Tempest of Death did occasionally educate me.  I have often seen "Albigensian",  but I never knew what it meant.  I decided to research it when I came across it in my notes.  I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that Albigensians  are the inhabitants of the prefecture of Albi in Southern France, and that the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi.  So the Albigensian Crusade described in this book took place in Albi.

Author Peter Wright's realism was admirable.  I can tell you that I was indeed immersed in the narrative, but sometimes felt overwhelmed.  This book is horrifying because it contains massive amounts of religious violence and genocide.  I have known about such real monstrous events.  So I have never needed to read about fictional monsters in order to experience horror. Real history is definitely horrifying enough.  I don't enjoy reading about those horrors, nor do I need reminders that they happened.  I have known holocaust survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms.  Readers who were born more recently and may have lived in protected environments, could experience genuine shock that humans do such things to members of their own species.  If you are such a reader, you have been warned by this review that A Tempest of Death contains this type of content.   

 

                                  

     

 

 

 

 

Early Grave: The Final Novel of the Lassiter Series

My only read of November 2022 that I'm reviewing on this blog is the legal thriller Early Grave by Paul Levine which was sent to me by publicist Wiley Saichek.  This is the fourth book I've reviewed  from Levine's Lassiter series on this blog.  The previous three of these novels were Bum Luck , Bum Deal and Cheater's Game.  My reviews of those books can be found at their respective hyperlinks.  I decided that I could reveal that Early Grave is the last book in the Lassiter series because this information has already appeared in the description of Early Grave on Goodreads.  

                                    

 It's been two years since I last encountered Levine's protagonist, lawyer Jake Lassiter .   Lassiter's health, never very good because of the repeated concussions that he received when he was a professional football player, has declined even more in Early Grave.  Yet he has soldiered on.  At this phase of his career, he has been prosecuting  dishonest or incompetent lawyers.  

Lassiter went to a high school football game because his godson, Rod, was on the team.  Rod was seriously injured and ended up in the hospital.  Lassiter was bothered by the lack of a physician on the field when Rod was injured. 

 So he filed a lawsuit to temporarily enjoin high school football games until it  could be determined that they were safe.  The definition of enjoin that I am using in this context is "to prohibit by judicial order" which is a quote from Merriam-Webster.  

Regarding attitudes toward lawyers, Jake says "They don't call us sharks for our ability to swim."  I've never considered lawyers as a whole predatory.  I think that any profession contains predatory individuals, but there are also well-meaning lawyers who may even be idealistic.  After all, there are lawyers who do pro-bono work.  

If we didn't have lawyers, people would have to defend themselves in court with varying degrees of success.  People who don't have the ability to argue well would be at a disadvantage.  So would people who couldn't afford to pay legal expenses which are considerable. It seems to me that without lawyers our society would be even more unjust and lacking in equality than it is now.

The opposing lawyer in this case, mentioned that participation in high school football had been declining for the last ten years.  I found an article on the National Federation of State High School Associations website about the decline of participation in high school sports in general at NFHS.org.  I noted that they said they were working to make  high school football as safe as possible by "teaching proper tackling skills".   

The poet Langston Hughes and his poem "Let America Be America Again" was brought up in this novel. I wasn't familiar with this poem and did a search for it.  I found it here. Though the style isn't what I prefer in poetry, I thought it was thematically significant.  I recommend reading it. 

The resolution wasn't surprising to me, but I still found it moving.  I will give Early Grave four stars on Goodreads.

                           

                                    

 

 

 

A Novel Dealing With The Iranian Jewish Community Circa WWII

A publicist asked me to read Love and War in the Jewish Quarter by Dora Levy Mossanen for review.  That was back in July.  I'm terribly sorry that it has taken so long for me to finish reading it. It's a World War II period novel, but being set in Iran makes it unusual.  I would like to thank publicist Emi Battaglia for sending me an advance copy of Mossanen's novel.  Love and War in the Jewish Quarter will appear on November 8.

One thing that drew me to this book is that Mossanen was born in Israel when it was in the process of becoming a state.  My grandmother was born in what would become Israel, though it was a good deal earlier than Mossanen.

                                        

Love and War in the Jewish Quarter opens in Tehran in 1941.  The main protagonist is a Jewish dentist who treats the Governor of Iran and his wife.  The dentist, Dr. Soleiman Yoran, had introduced novocaine to Iran.  He had brought his supply of novocaine from Paris where he went to dental school.

Soleiman's wife, Ruby, had died in childbirth.  Ruby had been a rebel.  I need to explain that during all Jewish synagogue services there were separate sections for men and women.  This is still the case among Orthodox Jews.  Among other Jewish sects, families are currently allowed to sit together for prayer. Mossanen reveals a scandalous incident when Ruby went into the men's section during the Sabbath service and sat down next to Soleiman.  This caused general consternation, but they stayed together smiling and holding hands.   I was smiling myself as I read this because I was brought up Orthodox, and could imagine how shocked everyone was.  Ruby continued to sit next to Soleiman at Sabbath services.  Over time increasingly fewer men attended.

We learn that Iranian Jews were required to have houses with low doors so they had to bow low as they left their homes.  Jews also weren't allowed to leave their homes on rainy days because they could supposedly drip Jewishness and defile Muslims.  So Iran was far from an ideal environment for Jews.

On the day when Soleiman was about to marry his second wife, he was summoned to the governor's bedside.  The governor had taken an opium overdose because he had been in terrible dental pain. Soleiman knew that he would be blamed for the governor's death.  He prevailed on a high official not to announce that the governor had died until the next day, so that Soleiman could get married.  

Velvet, the governor's wife, had inherited all his wealth.  She brought a sack of gold coins to Soleiman's wedding saying it was a wedding gift from the governor.   Soleiman said he couldn't accept it.  The father of the bride hauled the sack away saying it could be used by Tehran's Jewish community to build a hospital or other important projects.

I found Soleiman a sympathetic character and I admired him.  I also thought that Mossanen wrote very authentically about Jews.

The book ends with Soleiman's wedding to his second wife.  We don't find out what happens to Soleiman afterward. I would like to believe that he and his second wife successfully fled Iran, and eventually settled in Palestine.

From the acknowledgements I learned that Mossanen had felt for the first time that writing was lonely when she finished the manuscript of Love and War in the Jewish Quarter during a Covid quarantine. 

 I hope that Mossanen will write other books dealing with the less known aspects of Jewish history like this one.

                                

     

 

 

                                

 

 

Navajo Photographer Protagonist in a Mystery

 In order to make sure I would get a mystery read in September, I got one picked out even before I'd arrived at the halfway point. It was Shutter by Ramona Emerson.  The copy I'm reviewing is a library book.  The protagonist is a photographer which isn't all that unusual.  I've reviewed several books with photographer protagonists on this blog-- most recently Michael Angelo & the Stone Mistress by Steve Moretti.  Yet this is my first Navajo photographer protagonist. 

                             
                                 

As the book opens, Navajo Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer.  This means that she photographs crime scenes. Yet she also sees spirits which isn't a trait that would be considered compatible with professionalism in most work environments.  Needless to say, Rita must be careful not to reveal her paranormal gift  to officers in the Albuquerque PD. 

Being paranormally gifted, isn't the only way that Rita's job is problematic. I also knew that the Navajo avoid mentioning the dead or even the names of dead relatives.  So it seemed to me that Rita's job was extremely incompatible with her culture.  

The issue of the Navajo belief that the spirits of the dead (called "chindi" in mysteries by Tony Hillerman) could contaminate them, arose when Grandma took Rita to a church where ghosts were lingering.  I wondered why Navajo spirits of the dead would linger if they believed they were contaminating people that they loved.  Her grandfather's spirit worried that inimical spirits could make Rita crazy.

I was interested in the fact that Rita's neighbor was evidently a curandera.  Curandismo is a a Mexican healing tradition. She rubbed Rita with an egg, then she cracked the egg into a glass of water and told Rita to put the egg in the glass of water under her bed.  "Whoever has their eye on you will let you go," said the curandera.  There were also jars to put in each corner of the room.  Rita thought it was superstition.  I think that Rita's lack of belief in the measures that Rita's neighbor was taking to protect Rita would undermine their efficacy.

<Spoilers--

Rita learned Police Lieutenant Garcia was behind most of the local distribution of meth. This was a major revelation.  I wondered if Garcia did that because Latinos were being discriminated against when it came to advancement in the police department.  

End spoilers.>

It was mentioned in this book that Saint Veronica is the patron saint of photography.  Since I had never heard this before, I looked for a confirming link.  I found it at St. Veronica which links to a page about this saint's connection to photography.  Since Rita doesn't seem to be a devout Catholic, I didn't think that St. Veronica would have been significant for Rita.

There is a positive resolution to the book from a law enforcement perspective.  I decided to give the book a B+