Funny in Farsi

     I started this book a few weeks ago and I love it so much! It so informational and educational but makes me laugh out loud. I started reading it because I am very interested in Middle Eastern culture and it was recommended to me. This real life story about a young iranian girl's transition in American. Her name is Firoozeh Dumas and she wrote this comedic novel about her childhood. She came to America when she was 7, with her parents. Her mother did not know any English upon arriving and her father spoke "a version of English not yet shared with the rest of America" (8) than other people did so they did not always understand him. Firoozeh learned English quickly and soon her mother was taking her everywhere to be the translator.

funny excerpt:

     "Asking my father to ask the waitress the definition of "sloppy Joe" or "Tater Tots" was no problem. His translations, however, were highly suspect. Waitresses would spend several minutes responding to my father's questions, and these responses, in turn, would be translated as "She doesn't know." (9)

     I think the entire book is a message. She moved to the United States before 9/11 and she watched as her situation began to change and acceptance of her background and heritage changed. I think she wrote this book as a funny read to lighten up the mood because there are many underlying meanings. She laughs about it now but moving when you are very young is incredibly scary and all of our traditions seemed very strange. The adjustment must have also took some time. This book was written in 2003, just two years after 9/11. I think she was desperately trying to send the message that she and her family are normal humans and are not terrorists because after 9/11, people were very paranoid and scared and took those emotions out on people of Middle Eastern background, including Iranians. In the book there is also much to learn about culture. For example, she explains in an amusing manner to an amusement park worker that not all Middle Eastern people speak the same language and they are not all alike. She breaks down many stereotypes that are not as obvious as the fact I just mentioned. 

     Throughout her book I think her purpose is to spread knowledge and humor on her situation and humanize and Americanize herself, her family, and immigrants in general. 

I finished Kite Runner this week and highly recommend it!
I have recently started a new book. It is called "the Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards. I chose this book off the shelf partially because of the creative cover (yes I judged a book by its cover...)

I am only on the first chapter but already I can tell a lot about the author. Edwards uses a very descriptive style. She puts you right in the room when the babies are born and describes the emotions and the atmosphere perfectly. The first 3 paragraphs establishes the setting and a little bit of background about the characters in this novel. Below are the first few lines which give insight into her descriptive style:

"Th snow started to fall several hours before her labor began. A few flakes first, in the dull gray late-afternoon sky, and then wind-driven swirls and eddies around the edges of their wide front porch. He stood by her side at the window, watching sharp gusts of snow billow, then swirl and drift to the ground. All around the neighborhood, lights came on, and the naked branches of the trees turned white."

I love this introduction because I could picture this happening, vividly, in my imagination. I also love how she makes everything seem calm and perfect, just before the stressful labor, without a doctor, begins. I also love how the author is "all-knowing" about the characters. The fact that she knows so much about the characters helps us understand them and gives them a realness that would not be as clear otherwise.
In this first chapter, I start off very impressed at how well everything is going, despite the hectic surroundings of the babies being born. Everything is going perfectly and then the father of the two children realizes that his daughter has down syndrome. He sends her off with the nurse who helped deliver her and tells her to put his daughter in an institution. He then lies to his wife and tells her that the second child died as she was born. This part made me very upset and also made me more interested in the book. I'm looking forward to reading!

     For my short story group, we read victory lap. This was one of the coolest pieces of writing i have read in a while. There is no dialogue in quotations, or in the story anywhere. I think there might be some implied dialogue but in this story, telling reality from the imaginations of the three people from the story is difficult. One aspect of this story that makes it difficult to completely follow is that the entire story exists in the minds of three different people. Not only are the perspectives of the three in the form of a "stream of consciousness," they each have their own distinct styles and word choices. George Saunders really put in time in thinking about the different people. 

     In Alison's head, Saunders uses "Pas de chat," "changement," "pas de bourree." These are all words that a dancer would use as they are thinking about an upcoming dance performance or dance class and trying to remember their dance. She is a dancer and so Saunders recognized that putting in these words enhances the uniqueness of Alison. 

     The next character that we are inside the mind of is Kyle. Saunders again uses word choice to let us know more and more about this character. Kyle thinks faster and and he asks himself lots of rhetorical questions. "What is?" Why? Who?" Kyle also hears his parents reprimanding voices in his head. His parents are overbearing and so now when he knows he is doing something wrong, he hears his mom or dads voice in his head. This is shown in the excerpt below.

     EXCERPT:

     "Swearing in your head? Dad said in his head. Step up, Scout, be a man. If you want to swear, swear    

      aloud. 

      I don't want to swear aloud.

     Then don't swear in your head"

     The third person we are in the mind of is the abductor of Alison and the victim of Kyle. He uses obscenity obsessively and he has a much angrier tone. He even considers suicide to avoid jail. He has a morbid and scary stream of consciousness. Saunders developed his characters thoroughly and I hope to bring the depth of character that George Saunders uses through these three perspectives to my own short story in enhancing Betty and Earl. 

     I also read Nine Lives by Ursula K. Le Gumn. This story was the first of its kind that talked about cloning. The many many themes inside this story are crazy and mesh together so well. She really went outside the box and in my story I think I stay way to far inside my comfort zone. I want to try to create depth and write about things I do not fully understand.

SPOILERS***seriously do not read this if you do not want to know what happens!

     I started a new book last week called The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini. The book is historical fiction. It starts off being set in 2001 as a flashback of the narrators childhood. The book is set in Pakistan, where the narrator was born and grew up. The narrator, Amir, and his father are well off in Pakistan. His father's childhood friend and servant, Ali, and his son, Hassan, live with Amir and his father. Ali and Hassan are of Hazara ethnicity which is frowned upon in Pakistan. They are servants of Amir and his father but they are also friends. Amir and Hassan grew up together and have been inseparable since they were born. Hassan has a unwavering devotion to Amir and would do anything for him.
     The story starts off light and fun and then the kite running competition comes up. Amir and Hassan win the competition but after, something happens that destroys their relationship forever. Hassan has always been picked on by a group of boys in the neighborhood because of his ethnic background and that night, those boys raped him. Amir had been looking for Hassan and saw this happening. Amir ran away out of fear and never talked about it again. Hassan and Amir's relationship was ruined because of one night. Amir even lied and said Hassan stole money to try to get Hassan and his father fired. While this did not work, Ali and Hassan moved away anyway.
     I have never hated a narrator as much as I hate Amir for what he did, or didn't do, the night of the kite running competition. What makes this worse is that even though Amir did not help Hassan and ran away, Hassan's loyalty to Amir never even faltered. Amir ran away from his problems and most of all his guilt. He wanted Hassan to leave because Hassan was a constant reminder of his cowardice and weakness. Amir wanted to ignore what happened and never have to think about it. This makes me so upset!!!

     Despite my hatred of Amir, the book is fantastic. It is very accurate and helped me understand more about life in Pakistan back then and the cultural references give a great background.


Passage depicting Hassan's devotion:

     "Baba came right out and asked. "Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir's watch, Hassan?"
   
     Hassan's reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice: "Yes."
   
     I flinched, like I had been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood:
This was Hassan's final sacrifice for me. If he'd said no, Baba would have believed him because we all know Hassan never lied ... He knew that I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time. I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.
   
     Except Baba stunned me by saying, "I forgive you." " pg 105

The Lemon Tree Blog Post 2

     I am a little further along in reading my novel, the Lemon Tree. To add onto what I mentioned in my first blog post, the story begins around the time that Bashir Khairi (a Palestinian) and Dalia Eshkenazi (a Bulgarian Jew) are born in the 1940's. It follows the major events in their lives throughout the book. The major events line up pretty well. There will be a chapter written from the Khairi perspective and then a chapter written from the Eshkenazi perspective. The two chapters will have some event in common. For example, the chapter after the Khairis were forced to leave, the Eshkenazis come to their town, Ramla (Israeli name) or al-Ramla (Arabic name). The book also references hardships of their ancestors and how history happened to put them both in the situations they were in, the events that lead to them both having a connection to the house with the lemon tree. 

     The significance of the title, the Lemon Tree, is that there is a lemon tree in the backyard of the old Khairi residence that the Eshkenazis currently live in. Both Bashir and Dalia make emotional connections to the Lemon Tree. Once, while Dalia was looking at the lemon tree, she was thinking "why would anyone leave this place." Her government told her the Palestinians left willingly, when in fact they were forced, and so she did not fully understand the situation at that time. 

     I have noticed that many conflicts in the world stem from a lack of knowledge. People do not often have the patience to hear another perspective or point of view on a topic. This book illustrates how much the two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli, have in common. They both have faced many hardships, both have been discriminated against, and they are both wanting and searching for a place to call home. 

     This book, so far, has not made much reference to the extremists, both  Israeli and Palestinian, that we read about in the media. Tolan has instead focused on the majority of Palestinians and Israelis and their points of view, specifically the emotions and thoughts of these two families. He has broken down this massive and much debated conflict to a human and personal level. He succeeds because he, to my knowledge, has told this story according to the many interviews he conducted rather than inserting his own opinions into the mix. 

"The Lemon Tree" first entry

     The book I am currently reading is the Lemon Tree. I started reading it this summer when my cousin gave it to me. It is a very complex, in detail non-fiction book about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The author, Sandy Tolan, took on a huge burden in starting at the beginning and trying to remain unbiased. In the introduction he states "The key to this openness, I think, lies in the interweaving narratives: When someone sees his or her own history represented fairly, it opens up the mind and the heart to the history of the Other." In simpler terms, if a person hears their side of the story accurately, they will be more open to listening and understanding the other side. Understanding does not mean agreement, rather it means appreciation for the opposite view.

     Tolan demonstrates both sides in his book by following two families, the Khairis and the Eshkenazis. The Khairis were a powerful family in Palestine and were forced to leave their homes. The Eshkenazis who fled Bulgaria to find refuge in Israel during the Holocaust. It turns out that Bashir Khairi, when he goes to visit his old house, finds the Eshkenazis living there. I have not made it to that part yet but I am intrigued to see both of their reactions.

     The author does a fantastic job of remaining unbiased and I have teared up while reading about the situations of both. He is very particular about his language. For example, if that portion of the text is about the Khairis, Tolan uses the Arabic name of the town, "al-Ramla." However, if that portion of the text is about Dalia Eshkenazi, in the book the town will be called "Ramla," what Israeli's named the town.

     As I previously mentioned, the book is extremely comprehensive and there is politics, culture, religions, emotions, etc. While the politics of the surrounding countries and governments interest me, I love how deep Tolan goes to describe the emotions of both societies. It is abundantly clear how many interviews and years of research went into this novel to make it the factual, yet emotional, novel that it is. I am currently almost halfway through the book and I am looking forward to finishing it.