We Were the Lucky Ones

We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
2017
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating to Goodwill

It is no surprise that when you pick up a book about the Holocaust you will leave that book with a deep, dark, gut wrenching sickness.  It is impossible to truly grasp or imagine that many people being starved, tortured, and brutally murdered by their neighbors.  It is devastating and, no matter how much is written about it, makes no sense.  I have read the research and the studies showing that people everywhere are capable of this, and I believe it, but it just does not make sense.  The world is changing in so many scary ways.  There are countries all over the world going more conservative and being led by angry, shouting, womanizing leaders who have disgust for entire groups of people.  You never want to demean what people went through in World War II by comparing modern day situations to what happened then arbitrarily, but sometimes the mirrored experiences are frightening.  It is hard not to think of one when reading about the other. 

As a child, we were taught about the Holocaust with the idea that if we could learn about it we could ensure it would never happen again.  In college, my eyes were opened to other genocides happening in other countries.  I struggled to know what I could do as an American about Rawanda.  About Darfur.  Now, I am hearing the horror stories coming out of immigration detainment centers, and there has been an explosion of gun violence aimed at all people, but pointedly at the Jewish, the LGBTQ latina community, black people in their own churches.  Hatred is bubbling up in these very explosive and loud ways.  Meanwhile, our President is coming up with travel bans, transgender bans, insulting the disabled publicly, talking about sexually assaulting women openly.  We have placed yet another man accused of sexual assault in the highest court in our land. 

The very title of this book digs into your psyche.  You follow a whole family through the Holocaust, predominantly in Poland, and you get attached to them quickly.  They see terrible things and suffer in a variety of ways.  You see the woman digging a grave for herself and being told to dig one for her child as well.  The mother who cannot account for all her grown children and their children.  The grandfather who worked hard to build a life for himself and those he loves just to have it all stripped from him.  And yet, many of them make it out alive, and they are truly "the lucky ones."  Thinking of them as lucky is soul crushing in and of itself. 

This is a novel based on a real family, and it is reader friendly in that it is character driven and not bogged down with details.  I think that the style the author uses has made it to where people of varying ages and temperaments could pick it up, read it, and find themselves moved.  One thing I wonder when I read all of these books is when do you get out?  When is it too late?  There is a lot of talk about staying and fighting, but would you do that if you had a crystal ball and could see how bad it would get?

Small Sacrifices

Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule
1988
Weight: 8 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

I was working at Waldenbooks in early 2000 when a woman came in to the store proclaiming desperately that this book was her life and that I had to read it to understand her.  I had never met her before, but she pressed a copy of the book into my hands and then bought a copy for her attorney.  She was incredibly emotional and high-strung. 

I bought the book without paying much attention to it.  I was curious, but I was uncomfortable because I knew that Ann Rule was THE true crime author of the time.  I got home and saw the book was about a woman who tried to murder her children, successfully killing one.  I was a teenager.  I was not so sure I should have bought the book.  I hoped that the woman was just a little insane and mostly just a liar.  I put the book away and every time I picked it up I would just put it right back away.  I wondered who the woman thought she was.  The murderer, the child, the prosecution--couldn't be--she said she had an attorney.  Was she just attention-seeking?  I will never know. 

I finally read it this year.  We just moved into a new house, and we have less space even though we like this house better than the last.  We are purging a lot.  I am, of course, still trying to read and let go of all of these books.  There are still SO many.  I knew I wanted to let this one go because of my feelings about true crime and because of all the thoughts it brought up every time I came across it.

Almanac of the Dead

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
1992
Weight: 1.4 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

Seeing this book still gives me the slightest twinge of shame in my gut.  I read it in college, along with many other Silko books.  We had a white male professor who was wonderful and always trying to break out of his academic box without actually leaving it.  He would encourage us not to do grad school right away if ever.  He wanted us to read books by people who were not "old white men like himself."  He had a great smile and a little twinkle in his eyes.  The books he recommended were almost always great, and his expectations for us were high.

I did not do as well as I wanted to in his classes, but I would say I was pretty average.  After reading so much Silko, we were actually able to meet her one day.  She gave a talk and signed books.  She seemed so full of anger up at that podium and then frustrated with where she was at when signing books.  I don't know if she was or if it was me or if it was all of us, but I had this overwhelming desire to "fix it" and, of course, could not.  I would imagine coming to a school of predominantly privileged white women to discuss Native American life past and present wasn't a dream come true.  We were probably so disappointing and that is putting it mildly.

I remember enjoying this book and writing a paper on it.  Potentially hyped up on something that would keep me awake for days.  I flip through it now and see a few quotes underlined:

"Only a woman fantasizes bullets striking a man's back at orgasm; a man's fantasy at orgasm was firing bullets into the wife's husband" (p 362).

"Yaquis also understood that a person might need a number of names in order to conduct all of his or her earthly business" (p 227).

"The white men on the street were genetically defective.  Mosca was certain of it" (p 211).

"Each time a Palestinian child was shot by Israeli soldiers, Hitler smiled" (p 212)

I guess you get the gist.  Sadness and anger.  Frustration and violence.

Do Not Deny Me

Do Not Deny Me: Stories Jean Thompson
2009
Weight:9.6 oz
Method of Disposal: Left on Bainbridge Island in front of the grocery store

I want to write this whole blog about how amazing Do Not Deny me is, because it is so very amazing.  The first story brings you in strong and the last story ends strong.  You are not flipping any pages trying to see when it will end.  I am in love with the way she presents American dysfunction, and I cannot wait to get my hands on her book, Throw Like a Girl.

Unfortunately, that is all I can say on that right now.  I am far more focused on the fact that two black men were shot dead in the United States in the past two days.  Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.  Two more names to add to an incredibly long list of black people killed in this country unjustly.  Two more human beings with family, friends, loved ones who are most likely mourning, scared, and confused right now.  How do you make sense of a death like that?  Some of us can turn it into a cause or movement, some of us will be debilitated from it for some time, and some people cannot risk doing either of those things.  Some people have lost the people they love and they should not have to fight this fight.   We need to stand behind them, support them, affirm that black lives matter.  Don't be quiet in your discomfort.  This has got to change.