Ghost Boys: Remembering Child Victims of Racism

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes is a nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards of 2018 that made it to the final round.   Since Jewell Parker Rhodes is one of my favorite authors, I prioritized the book.  I was fairly certain that it would be worthy of my vote.   I've reviewed Rhodes' Bayou Magic and Hurricane on this blog.  The reviews can be found at the hyperlinks I've provided.  So based on previous experience, I expected great things of Ghost Boys.

                             

Ghost Boys deals with the misperception of African-American boy children as threats due to deeply ingrained prejudice.  Jewell Parker Rhodes shows that this is by no means a new issue.  She traces it back to the lynching of Emmet Till in 1955, but there were probably other Black children who died un-noticed in earlier periods of American history.

Peter Pan is mentioned in Ghost Boys. A discussion question in the back of the book wonders about how this English Victorian children's fantasy could be connected to Rhodes' anguished protest against very real violence. I saw a troubling parallel between these works.  Like the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, the ghosts of the victims portrayed in this novel would never grow up.  They are as lost to their families and communities as if they had been spirited away to Neverland.

The Latino character Carlos plays an ambivalent role in the heartbreaking story of the young protagonist Jerome, but in the end his influence is positive.  He and his family show Jerome's family a spiritual means of always remembering him through the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition.  This inter-cultural relationship of families bound together by the loss of Jerome was very moving.

The historical and spiritual dimensions of Ghost Boys deepens the narrative.  Jewell Parker Rhodes met my expectations by providing a truly meaningful portrayal of a contemporary tragedy.

                                 

                               

Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa

I've never read YA fantasist Julie Kagawa previously, but when I saw that she had written an Own Voices fantasy taking place in Japan, I couldn't resist.  I was very grateful to be approved by the publisher for an ARC via Net Galley.

                          

I've actually read some fantasies based on Japanese legends, but none were Own Voices books.  They were all by Caucasians, and they were mainly martial arts oriented fantasies grounded in samurai films.  Shadow of the Fox has a number of similarities to those books, but the biggest difference is that Julie Kagawa gave us a character who poked fun at the samurai and their values.  The reviews I've seen don't even mention this character, but he was the one who stood out for me.

The protagonists also don't fit the formula I've seen in Japanese background fantasies.   I've seen kitsune (fox woman) characters.  They're usually destructive villains, not protagonists.  Yumeko was trained to suppress her kitsune persona and powers at a temple where she was brought up.  Then there's the samurai protagonist, Tatsumi.  Samurai tradition contends that the soul of the samurai is in his sword. This is a metaphor for the samurai's total commitment to the way of the warrior.  It isn't intended to be literal. In Shadow of the Fox, there really is a spirit in Tatsumi's sword, but it's a demon.  This is a significant challenge for a protagonist.  He had to fight that demon in order to maintain self-mastery.  So both these protagonists had divided natures.  They weren't entirely trustworthy.

My favorite character was essentially a sidekick.  His name was Okame, and he's a ronin which means masterless samurai.  Every ronin I've ever read about before is continually trying to find a master.  They're never happy unless they've sworn fealty to a lord, and can be proper samurai.  At first, I thought of Okame as a drunken fool who lacked ambition, but as time went on I realized that he was a subversive who had some really good dialogue.

I liked the fact that Julie Kagawa claimed the freedom to play with the standard figures of Japanese fantasy and move beyond formula.   I am looking forward to finding out what she does in future volumes.

                         

Another Anne Perry Christmas Mystery

I admit that I'm usually much more impressed by Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries, but authors can't always be brilliant.  I did hope for better when I requested A Christmas Revelation from Net Galley.

This is my one hundredth review for Net Galley.  May I have many more!

                                

I read A Christmas Garland by Anne Perry primarily because I was intrigued by it being located in India, and I did enjoy it.  A Christmas Revelation was scheduled for the December meeting of my F2F mystery group.  So I thought I'd try that one too.

What stood out about this Christmas mystery is that it dealt with ordinary working class people.   Perry has a tendency to focus on the perspectives of aristocrats and officialdom.  I applaud her for thinking that there was a story worth telling in the lives of an accountant for a clinic catering to street prostitutes called Squeaky and a street urchin named Worm that he'd adopted.  I'd be more interested in the women who were treated at the clinic.  They actually are human beings.  There could be an inspiring Christmas story dealing with them.

One thing that stuck in my craw was those character names.   It seemed to me that people who allow others to call them Squeaky and Worm should have more self-respect.  The name Squeaky reminds me of an accusation hurled at cowards. "What are you, a man or a mouse?"  Squeaky turned out to be rather heroic.   It made me think that he shouldn't put up with being called Squeaky.

The mystery itself seemed rather routine to me.   It was okay.  I'd give it three stars.

                               

                               

To Live Out Loud-- A Novel About Émile Zola's Life and Death

When I reviewed A Different Kind of Angel by Paulette Mahurin last month here , I said that I would be getting to Mahurin's 19th century homophobia novel, The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, soon.  Yet I had Mahurin's Zola novel, To Live Out Loud, on my Kindle. Yes, I actually purchased it. Sometimes I do review books I bought.  😄

                            

A more cogent reason to prioritize To Live Out Loud is because it now seems so urgently necessary to remind people about what happened in late 19th century France.  Right wing military officials inflamed an antisemitic hysteria by court-martialing loyal Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 and condemning him for treason based on falsified evidence.  For  American Jews, this is a travesty of justice that echoes through history due to recent events.

 In 2017 white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia chanting "Jews will not replace us." Then in 2018, the worst antisemitic atrocity in American history occurred when a right wing extremist killed 11 praying Jews on the Sabbath at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania synagogue.

Dreyfus had a defender in the French press.  He was Émile Zola who wrote a searing editorial commentary called "J'Accuse!" which became famous.  I knew about "J'Accuse!", but it was To Live Out Loud that made me aware that Zola was subjected to violent attacks afterward.  Today journalists who expose injustices are no more safe than Zola had been.  There is a hostile atmosphere that encourages persecution of journalists.  So I very much appreciate that Paulette Mahurin focuses on journalists who were social activists such as
Émile Zola in this book, and Nellie Bly in her most recent novel, A Different Kind of Angel.

To Live Out Loud also made me aware of a French Kristellnacht  in the French colony of Algeria that was an incident which happened during the same period as the Dreyfus case.  According to a Wikipedia article on The History of Jews in Algeria,  in 1898 two Jews were killed and 156 Jewish shops in Algiers were attacked as a result of antisemitic hysteria among the French colonists.

My only criticism of this book is that I thought it would have been more intense if it had been from Zola's perspective.  I don't really see the need for a fictionalized friend of Zola who barely exists as a character.  After Zola's death, there could have been an epilogue from the perspective of Alfred Dreyfus perhaps.

Otherwise To Live Out Loud was a meticulously researched novel that speaks to our times.  Zola's courage and integrity are memorialized through this book.

I'd like to close with a quote from Anatole France's eulogy at Zola's funeral:

"Zola deserves well of his country for not having lost faith in its ability to rule by law."

                         

 









                                

The Rat Catchers' Olympics: Dr. Siri Mystery at the 1980 Summer Olympics

I was introduced to Colin Cotterill's Dr. Siri Paiboun series by the F2F mystery group that I attend a number of years ago.  I said then that the first Dr. Siri novel, The Coroner's Lunch,was delicious.  I have loved this 20th century Lao doctor and his circle of friends, but I've never reviewed any of the books in the series on this blog.  It's about time that I did.  I received a free copy of The Rat Catchers' Olympics from Edelweiss and this is my review.

              

The first eleven books of the Dr. Siri series took place primarily in Laos though there was a foray into Thailand and a nightmarish journey into Pol Pot Cambodia.  The series has also dawdled in the 1970's for more years than that decade had.  With The Rat Catchers' Olympics Cotterill finally turns to 1980. He also leaves Southeast Asia for the circus like atmosphere of an Olympics in the Soviet Union.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the Olympics.  I watch my favorite events with rapt attention.  I also adore the human feats of skill and daring at circuses.  So calling the Olympics a circus wasn't intended to be a disparaging comment.  Yet it is a very different background for a Dr. Siri novel.

The 1980 Summer Olympics was unique for a number of reasons.  Up until I read this Cotterill novel, I only knew that it was the Olympics that the Western nations boycotted due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

 I researched all the tidbits of info about this Olympics that Cotterill dropped into the narrative.  This was indeed the first Olympic appearance of athletes from Laos.  I thought that Cotterill was engaging in wordplay when he told us that the pole vault was won by a Pole--especially when he followed it up with the shameless puntification that the gold medal in boxing had not been won by a box.  It did turn out that Polish athlete Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz  won pole vault gold and he made a defiant gesture for which he became famous.  I couldn't confirm the Cotterill assertion that more women athletes participated in the 1980  Moscow Spring Olympics than in any previous Olympics, but  it was true that the most dramatic result was the victory of the inexperienced Zimbabwe women's field hockey team who were only invited because the Soviet women's field hockey team found themselves unopposed due to the boycott.

I didn't research the post-Olympic rat catching contest in this novel because it seemed pretty clear that it was purely fictional. Cotterill invented it for the entertainment of his readers like all the wonderful dialogue that always appears in every Dr. Siri novel.

Oh yes, there are also murders in Moscow that need to be solved.   The resolution certainly wasn't what I expected, but it was in keeping with our current atmosphere of political cynicism.

The only thing I missed was the shamanic aspect which wasn't at all prominent in this particular Dr. Siri book. As a fan of the paranormal, I consider this the best part of the series.  I hope that the most recent Dr. Siri novel, Don't Eat Me, includes lots of communications from spirits.

                           

The Eagle and the Dragon--An Original and Multicultural Historical Fiction Novel

It was a total surprise when I won The Eagle and the Dragon by Lewis McIntyre from one of  author Stephanie Dray's monthly giveaways for her list members.  McIntyre's novel is about an ancient Roman diplomatic mission to China which makes it very unusual. So when I was gifted with a copy by the author via Amazon, I looked forward to reading it.  Yet at 682 pages, I wasn't sure where I could fit it into my schedule.   I ended up having to start it and put it aside while I dealt with books that I had committed myself to review.   I finally finished The Eagle and the Dragon recently, and this is my honest review.

                         

I wondered about whether this book had any historical basis.  I found a 2004 article in The Economist  called "They Came, Saw and Settled: The Romans in China" here.   Judging from the content of that article, I would say that it's possible that the events described in The Eagle and the Dragon could have happened.  McIntyre definitely did his research.

While browsing reviews, I encountered one on Goodreads which claimed that The Eagle and the Dragon becomes a preachy Christian novel at some point.   This didn't seem to be in keeping with what I'd seen of the book.  I also didn't think that Stephanie Dray would have failed to mention that in her description of The Eagle and The Dragon.  A giveaway is a promotion, so she would have wanted the book to find its audience.  There are readers who prefer Christian inspirational fiction, and there are readers that avoid it.  I sometimes read in this category.  When I do, they are usually books about the Amish.  See my recent review of Her Fear by Shelley Shephard Gray here .The only reason why I thought it was possible that the review might be accurate is because McIntyre did write what seems to be a Christian short story that appeared before this novel called "Come Follow Me".

After finishing the book, I have to say that I don't consider this a Christian inspirational novel.   There are characters who represent a variety of spiritual traditions in this book.  They are all presented sympathetically.  I believe that the reviewer was referring to a character who went through a Christian conversion experience.   A Christian inspirational novel would follow that up by primarily focusing on that character's perspective.  Yet after the section about the Christian conversion experience, the focus of The Eagle and the Dragon remained on central characters who were non-Christians practicing their religions and being shown in a positive light.   I believe that this book reflects the spiritual pluralism in the ancient world by including within its pages characters who were Roman, Mongolian and Bactrian polytheists as well as Jews, Buddhists and Christians.

My favorite character in The Eagle and the Dragon was Marcia, a Chinese woman who was also of Roman descent.  Since she knew Latin as well as (probably Mandarin) Chinese, she functioned as a translator who could speak to both Chinese and Romans.   As the narrative progresses she learns fighting skills and becomes even more extraordinary.

For me, The Eagle and the Dragon is five star fiction because its narrative trajectory is original. I also found it to be a gripping novel of adventure that was also culturally inclusive.

                         

 

A Different Kind of Angel: The False Imprisonment of a 19th Century Refugee

I first heard of  Paulette Mahurin on author Christoph Fischer's blog a number of years ago when he was heaping praise on her novel The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap,  dealing with bigotry against a lesbian in a small Nevada town in the late 19th century.  When Mahurin recently gifted me with her latest book, A Different Kind of Angel, I was reminded that I still hadn't read The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap.  I hope to rectify that error in the immediate future.

A Different Kind of Angel focuses on a fictional woman unjustly consigned to the asylum where  the real investigative journalist Nellie Bly went undercover in 1887 to expose their abuse of patients.  Nellie Bly appears as a character late in the novel.

                               

In the current political climate in which my government considers its harsh treatment of refugees justifiable, it's instructive to examine earlier times when American authorities had a similar attitude.  

A Different Kind of Angel's protagonist Klara Gelfman was sent to a mental institution because she couldn't speak English.   She was a refugee fleeing Russia due to a major pogrom that really did occur in 1881 precipitated by the Jews of Russia being irrationally blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

Mahurin's fictional Klara was still imprisoned inside that institution when Emma Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus" in 1883 whose famous lines about "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" were later inscribed on a plaque placed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.  This was the same period when the Immigration Restriction League was founded and gained an influential following.  They believed that immigrants were inferior  and that they would destroy America's social fabric.  I can only conclude that Emma Lazarus wasn't reflecting the cultural consensus of her time.  Her poem must have been aspirational.   She hoped that Americans would one day be welcoming toward refugees.   Let's just say that we still need to do a great deal of work on that issue.

I thought that Mahurin portrayed Klara and other patients convincingly as human beings.  On the other hand, she has Klara make an observation about the nature of insanity that seemed too much like current ideas.   I agreed with it.  I just don't believe that someone from late 19th century Russia would be thinking in those terms.

What I liked most about this book was that Mahurin brought Nellie Bly's real undercover investigation of the asylum to life powerfully by showing us the impact of their abusive practices on patients.  I felt that Mahurin was herself playing the investigative role of Nellie Bly by uncovering the horrors of that institution for her readers before Nellie Bly showed up in the story line.