tightly focused

The Submission by Amy Waldman

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: For this story to work, we all have to cast our minds back to 2003, a scant two years after the 9/11 attacks, and remember how raw those attacks still felt.  Only then can we all ask ourselves the question: would I have supported a memorial designed by a secular Muslim-American if it had been chosen under these circumstances?  Hopefully, we can all answer honestly that we would have.  And if perhaps we wouldn't have then, certainly with the distance of additional decade, we can all say we would now.  But that's almost beside the point because Waldman gives us multiple points of view without forcing us to choose.

Waldman recreates the mood of post-9/11 New York City without pulling her punches.  Numerous sides get their share of the story-telling: the widow who tries to be fair-minded; politicos who try to pander to all sides without, of course, ever appearing to; the brother of a firefighter who has made being anti-Islam his personal cause; other anti-Islamists who aren't afraid to piggy-back on the fear of the time, even though they didn't lose anyone in the attacks; the reporter who get the leak about the story of the Muslim who won the anonymous competition to design the 9/11 memorial.  If some of these sides are presented more as caricatures than fully fleshed-out characters, that's almost beside the point too as this is a not a character-driven story.

This book has other flaws, perhaps the biggest one being that too many things seem to be beside the point, including things like the motivation of the person who leaked the news about the designer of the memorial, and whether anyone ever found out who it was.  But Waldman does well to keep her story focused on what does matter - the conflicts, internal and external that arise in a situation like this.  Overall, this is a very well written and thoughtful piece of fiction that could all too easily have been non-fiction, which is something we would all do well to remember.

prejudice and kindness

The Star Fisher by Laurence Yep

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction, children's

Challenge: A-Z (author)

Review: In 1927, Yep's mother moved with her parents and siblings from Ohio to West Virginia. Although her parents are immigrants with little English, the family had a good life in Ohio. But with the move to West Virginia, the family is brought up short by the prejudice that is demonstrated by some townsfolk. Fortunately, they are also confronted with great acts of kindness by other members of the town. Using the metaphor of the star fisher, who lives with one foot on the earth and one in the heavens, Yep convincingly uses his family's story to write a lovely book about family and friendship.

the many disadvantages

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: YA

Review: How many disadvantages can one person overcome? Junior, the narrator of this book, overcomes several disabilities at birth, and then must overcome the physical manifestations of those disabilities (oversize head, lisp, stutter, etc.) for the rest of his life. On top of that he faces the disadvantages that come with being a member of the Spokane Indian tribe: poverty, endemic alcoholism, and general hopelessness.

But Junior is a determined and very smart kid. Taking the advice of one of his teachers at the reservation school, Junior decides to attend the white school 22 miles away. Here he overcomes the disadvantages of prejudice at his new school and the fact that many people on the reservation, including his erstwhile best friend, consider him a traitor.

The story of overcoming so many disadvantages could easily become trite. But not in the hands of Sherman Alexie. In this semiautobiographical novel, Alexie gives his narrator such an engaging voice (not to mention Ellen Forney's drawings) that there is nothing trite about this book. This story rings true no matter what culture you come from, or what your personal disadvantages may be.