White Tears

"On your record deck, you played the sound of the middle passage, the blackest sound. You wanted the suffering you didn’t have, the authority you thought it would bring...Then came the terror when the real darkness first seeped through the walls of your bedroom, the walls designed to keep you safe and dreaming. And finally your rising sense of shame when you admitted to yourself that you were relieved the walls were there. The shame of knowing that you would do nothing, that you would allow it all to carry on."

White Tears by Hari Kunzru is a strange, challenging, compelling book. I almost returned it to the library after the first 50 pages because it seemed to be yet another book about socially-dysfunctional, weirdly-obsessive white guys. The writing and the development of the plot kept me going. That's the author's gift, I guess:  to compel me to read a book I think doesn't interest me that actually ends up interesting me. In the end, the white guys are just the vehicle, the cheval, for a story about lost blues musicians, the danger of obsession, futile white guilt, mass incarceration, cultural appropriation, and the powerlessness of being outside of the ruling oligarchy that is America.

Reading it made me feel a little crazy: obsessive and guilty and miserable about both our past and our present. I wonder if people who didn't grow up in the south surrounded by blatant racism and hyper-aware of their own ancestors' roles feel the same kind of pervasive guilt about the past that I feel when confronted with these truths. It feels horrifying and crippling, and I don't know what to do about it. Where does the guilt of the ancestors end and my own guilt begin? For I also am relieved that the walls are there for me, and I too am riding the easy waves instead of fighting the current.

This book was well-written with many deep, affecting themes woven into a short narrative, and the plot will keep you guessing until the end. Honestly, I'm still not 100% sure what actually happened and what didn't. It's definitely not a feel-good book, so if you're looking for that, look elsewhere, but in my opinion, it's worth reading, studying, absorbing. This post feels unfinished because I feel like this book is not finished with me yet.

White Rose, Black Forest

photo by Amy Brandon

"You are privileged to read these words so many are barred from. And why are they barred? Because the Nazis know that their real enemy is the independent thinker."

 from White Rose, Black Forest by Eoin Dempsey

I don't read on Kindle as much as I read print, but a few weeks ago, a friend recommended White Rose, Black Forest  by Eoin Dempsey to me, and when I went looking for it, Amazon First Reads seemed liked the best way to get it.  I don't know if I'll stick with the program, but I thought I'd give it a try.  If anyone has had any experience with the service, tell me what you've thought.

White Rose, Black Forest was an entertaining read.  At first I wasn't sure I was going to stick with it, because it begins with a girl contemplating suicide, and I just wasn't sure I was up for that kind of book.  Turns out, it's pretty much the opposite of that kind of book. Here are some key elements:

• a remote cabin in a snowy wood in the Black Forest in 1943
• a strong female protagonist who happens to be a Nazi dissident
• the daring rescue of an enemy spy by said protagonist
• the enemy and the dissident snowed in alone for weeks
• the dissident's ex-boyfriend, now a Gestapo officer
• an escape attempt through the snowy woods with a stay in a cave (I love a cave) 

What will happen? Read it and find out. While much of the plot defies belief, it is an entertaining, escapist story, and if you're like me, a break from reality will be much welcomed. Also if you're like me, you will have to try your best to ignore how quickly and underhandedly Hitler's Fascists took over Germany in the 1930s.  Scary stuff.