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Book Review: The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
Summary:
Dr. Cone is respected as the founder of Black liberation theology. In this book first published in 2011 he explores the connections between the Jesus’s crucifixion and the lynchings committed by white Americans against Black Americans. He also explores in a forthright manner how Christianity is experienced and expressed in Black American churches and directly addresses the seeming contradiction of Black Americans embracing the faith they encountered initially through white enslavers.
Review:
I think it’s important before giving my thoughts on this book to establish for those who may web search their way here who I am. I’m a white, US American woman with the privilege of a Masters degree. While I don’t hazard to guess who Dr. Cone intended to write for, I will say I found both a greater understanding of the Black Christian church in the US and simultaneously called out as a white US American – a couple of times as a white woman specifically. If you are a white US American and not a Christian, this is still a relevant read for you. 79% of Black US Americans consider themselves to be Christian (Pew Research Center) – a greater percent than either US Americans overall or when compared to white US Americans alone. If we are to be good allies, it’s important to understand how this faith intertwines with the atrocious history and (Dr. Cone argues, and I agree with him, continued presence of) lynching in the US.
Dr. Cone gives context for how Black US Americans, especially those who are descendants of enslaved people, came to find and embrace the Christian faith. He also discusses some prominent white and Black theologians, highlighting the differences in how they addressed or, in the case of white theologians, failed to address systemic racism in the US.
I could not find one sermon or theological essay, not to mention a book, opposing lynching by a prominent liberal white preacher.
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I was particularly moved by the section that discussed how these theologians reacted to the 1963 Birmingham Baptist Church bombing, which resulted in the deaths of four Black girls – Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Carol Denise McNair (11). Dr. Cone’s justified palpable frustration at the general lack of response even in the face of such clear evil was important to hear.
The title of the book alludes to the answer to a couple of questions I’ve heard people ask before – how is the Black Christian experience different from that of white Christians and how did the descendants of enslaved people come to embrace the faith of those who enslaved their ancestors? According to Dr. Cone, Black US Americans saw a fellow sufferer in Jesus and a clear connection between how he was crucified and how Black US Americans are unjustly treated. He also draws attention to how Black churches pay attention to different aspects of the Bible than what you might hear in white churches.
One cannot correctly understand the black religious experience without an affirmation of deep faith informed by profound doubt. Suffering naturally gives rise to doubt. How can one believe in God in the face of such horrendous suffering as slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree? Under these circumstances, doubt is not a denial but an integral part of faith. It keeps faith from being sure of itself. But doubt does not have the final word. The final word is faith giving rise to hope.
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Dr. Cone directly addresses the frustration of the white people who enforce segregation and lynching and Black people suffering from these things both laying claim to the same faith and how painful that is. My takeaway was that, rather than ask how white supremacists and Black US Americans can lay claim to the same faith, acknowledge that white supremacy is twisting the faith of white US Americans.
Hate and white supremacy lead to violence and alienation, while love and the cross lead to nonviolence and reconciliation.
(loc 46%)
White supremacy tears faith to pieces and turns the heart away from God.
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Dr. Cone also dedicates space to Black women’s voices, and I was particularly moved by this part as it features Black women directly calling out white women as having the ability to bring change to white supremacy. I have so often heard the opposite, disempowering message that our options of action as white women are limited due to the patriarchy, but that is an overly limited viewpoint. While it is true the patriarchy limits us, we do have the ears of other white folks in a way that Black people often do not, and white women may have more influence over the men in our lives than we may realize. (When I say men in our lives I mean this in the most inclusive way possible – family members, sons, friends, colleagues, etc…) Black women in this book see and call out the power that we white women clearly have with specific examples of how white supremacy responds to perceived affronts on white women. If we have the power to cause harm to Black folks in this way, then we have the power to, at the very least disengage from it by not allowing our experiences to be used as the spark to start off the firestorm, but perhaps we can also use it to quench the violence to begin with. I think it’s important for those reading this not to mistake this as a call for white saviors but rather as a call for white women to cease (knowingly or unknowingly) inciting violence and to work against it. I think of it as the Bible says – take the log out of our own eyes first.
This book also includes some very meaningful explorations of the blues and Gospel music, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King’s theology. It ends with a call to address continued issues, especially as seen through the prison system. As a white woman who grew up rural poor with a large local issue when I was in high school being whether or not to bring in a prison as a source of jobs to an economically depressed area, I viewed this as yet another reason to address efforts toward our incredibly problematic private prison industrial complex in the US.
Through private prisons and the “war against drugs,” whites have turned the brutality of their racist legal system into a profit-making venture for dying white towns and cities throughout America.
(loc 97%)
This clearly was a meaningful read for me, and I can easily see what an important read it is for my fellow white US Americans. It does not give easy answers for what to do, but it demonstrates how white supremacy hurts everyone and leaves one with an urge to be part of the change for good.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 226 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: purchased
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
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On Josh and Anna Duggar and the Fundamentalist Christian Culture of Forgiving Molesters and Abusers
I don’t often write non book reviews anymore, but something has come into the news that hits close to my heart and my own personal experience, and I felt it necessary to put my perspective out there.
Probably most people by now have heard that Josh Duggar of the famous Quiverfull family the Duggars has admitted that he molested young girls when he was a teenager (source). Perhaps what may be more shocking to most people is the knowledge that his wife, Anna, knew about this before they were married and married him anyway and is having children with him. (They currently have three young children, with a fourth on the way).
If you read Anna’s and Josh’s official statements, you will notice a theme among them.
Anna says, “He continued to do what he was taught. [I know] who Josh really is – someone who had gone down a wrong path and had humbled himself before God and those whom he had offended. Someone who had received the help needed to change the direction of his life and do what is right.” source, bold emphasis added by me.
Josh says, “I would do anything to go back to those teen years and take different actions. I sought forgiveness from those I had wronged and asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life. In my life today, I am so very thankful for God’s grace, mercy and redemption.” source, bold emphasis added by me.
In the fundamentalist Christian community, there is this idea that only those who were not truly saved are capable of abuse or molestation. I know this, because I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian community and heard this rhetoric over and over again. If Christianity was a ladder with fundamentalism at the top and the most liberal church you can think of at the bottom, my church growing up was one rung below the Quiverfulls. (If you are not familiar with what Quiverfull is, I highly recommend reading this expose on it).
Even in my slightly less fundamentalist fundamentalist Christian community growing up this idea existed. If someone has molested or abused people, they are clearly not saved, because no one with Jesus living in their heart would be capable of such heinous acts. Thus, if a person who has committed these acts “comes to Jesus” aka gets saved aka simply states that they now have faith in Jesus, the community believes that they are now incapable of molesting or abusing anyone. What this means is that all a molester or abuser has to do when caught is state how truly sorry they are, that they have seen their wrongs, that they have asked Christ to come into their lives and save them, that they have now repented and are turning 180 degrees from what they were.
You can see this same rhetoric in what Anna and Josh say above. While I seriously doubt that Josh is actually the changed person he claims to be (once a molester, always a molester, in my opinion), I do believe that his wife, Anna, truly believes that it’s ok to have children with him, because Josh is different now. He’s got Jesus. He didn’t have Jesus before, and that was bad, but he does now, so it’s ok. You can see how these ideas would lead to the harboring of abusers and molesters within the community. The molester and/or abuser knows exactly what rhetoric to say to get out of it. EVEN IF they had previously claimed they were saved, they can simply state that they thought they had been saved, but they must not have truly been one with Jesus or Satan wouldn’t have been able to entice them to commit these heinous acts. It’s irrelevant if the molester actually believes this or not, they simply know the rhetoric to say to get a clean slate in the community. While forgiveness is admirable, there are just situations and circumstances where that forgiveness should not go hand-in-hand with trusting the person to be around vulnerable people or with not punishing them at all or holding them accountable at all.
I personally know of at least two scenarios in my own community I grew up in where similar abusers and/or molesters have been given a free pass to be around children because they have “repented and come to Jesus now” so they “couldn’t possibly be capable of it anymore.” This culture fundamentalist Christianity has of sweeping these situations under the rug and protecting the abusers and molesters simply because they have come to Jesus is inexcusable. Yet it is so deeply ingrained in the culture, that I doubt it will ever change. So why am I bothering to write this? I want anyone who comes into contact with people from that community to be aware of the fact that just because they claim someone is a man of God or an upstanding citizen or a woman after God’s own heart that that does NOT mean that they have done nothing heinous in their past. They may have, and the community may even know of it and still speak of them that way. If you are in contact with children from this community please listen to what they say closely. If they say something like “so-and-so used to be very bad but then they came to Jesus so it’s ok now,” that is most likely a situation that warrants closer attention. These children need us to pay attention and try to protect them because God knows their own community will not.
Book Review: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Summary:
Imagine a world where the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out the majority of the European population, rather than one-third of it. This is the world Robinson imagines, one where Buddhism and Islam rise as the two major religions of the world (with no religion a close third). See the history of the world through the eyes of two souls who keep reincarnating in different cultures, struggling to better both themselves and their world that could easily have been ours.
Review:
I originally picked this book up because I have long held a fascination with the various religions of the world (I was actually a Religious Studies minor in undergrad). The “what if” at the center of the book seemed like a great starting place to me. Indeed, what if most of the followers of currently largest faith (Christianity, source) had died off? What things would change and what would have stayed the same? Robinson chooses to tell this tale through reincarnating souls, which sometimes gives us a lot of access to these changes but other times leaves the reader feeling like they got just a passing breath of a culture and a century.
I didn’t realize going into this that Robinson had chosen to tell this story through the eyes of the same souls reincarnating over and over again. It’s an interesting choice that I am uncertain about as it lends a sort of “this much we know” to the spiritual side of the story. We, the readers, know that the souls of people in this world definitely exist, they go to the bardo to await judgment and reincarnation. The bardo they go to appears to reflect whatever faith they had (Muslims have their own, Buddhists have their own, etc…) The idea is also put out there that each of the faiths is a different path to the same end (enlightenment). Much as I may personally believe this idea, I’m not sure how I feel about this particular story being so mythology heavy. The History BA in me very much wanted to see a more analytical power-structure play-out, which we do get some of, but not as much as we get of the how to better our souls question. I suppose what I am trying to say is that, although I was anticipating a book that was scholarly with a dash of spiritual, what I got instead was the reverse. That’s not a bad thing, and I still enjoyed it, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting, and I do wonder how the story may have played out differently if Robinson wasn’t so tied to the same souls over and over again.
One aspect of the same souls reincarnating that niggled at me a bit was that throughout history, no matter where they were born (or what gender or species), their names always started with the same letters. So a character whose first name in the first incarnation started with the letter K always had a name that started with the letter K. It got so I could predict who was who and, to a certain extent, how they would act in each incarnation. On the one hand, it was a cool idea, although highly unlikely someone’s name would start with the same letter throughout time and cultures and languages. On the other hand, it distracted me from the more interesting story of the different world developing with the rise of different cultures than actually appeared in our own history.
Similarly, I think there is far too much story and richness in this idea and timeline to limit it to one book. There were multiple incarnations that I really wanted to know more of. I wanted to know the whole story of these lives and this place. Instead, the reader gets a quick glimpse into one time in their lives, and then we are left jumping ahead to the bardo to find out how they died and oh here comes the next incarnation. Perhaps the point was to make the reader feel as if each life is only a blink, but the scholar in me was left wanting to know so much more about every area and life the book briefly visited. It was like getting only a small morsel of each chocolate in a box of delicious chocolates, instead of getting to savor them all over a long period of time.
All of this said, let me now discuss the parts of the book I really enjoyed (and would have liked to have seen more of). My favorite is how Robinson reimagined the Americas. The same essential problem of real history still exists for the Native Americans even with the change of the Christians mostly dying off. Mainly, they lacked easily sourced heavy metals to make higher-tech weapons and they were susceptible to all of the germs European explorers brought with them. (I learned about this in my classes in US History for my BA, but my professors told me this whole idea is also presented in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel
Robinson does a much better job painting Islam and Buddhism with a nuanced brush. Since their cultures dominate the book, this means most of the book is much more gray area, rather than presenting everything as black and white. One element that demonstrates this, is how Robinson handles Islam and women. All sides of the arguments about Islam and women are presented here. There are incarnations of the souls that are Muslim women who argue strongly that the men are misinterpreting the Quran, what Mohammed said, etc… There are of course other incarnations that say no, the extreme fundamentalism is the right interpretation. Through showing Islam through many different lenses in a world that is different from our own, Robinson demonstrates how religion is so incredibly open to interpretation, and good and bad people can shape it to their own agendas. One passage that I think demonstrates how well Robinson walks this line is a conversation some characters have about the women wearing the veil or not:
The veil has a kind of power, in certain situations. All such signs stand for other things; they are sentences spoken in matter. The hijab can say to strangers, ‘I am Islamic and in solidarity with my men, against you and all the world.’ To Islamic men it can say, ‘I will play this foolish game, this fantasy of yours, but only if in return you do everything I tell you to.’ For some men this trade, this capitulation to love, is a kind of release from the craziness of being a man. So the veil can be like putting on a magician queen’s cape…. Or it can be like putting on a slave’s collar, certainly. (page 592)
If this passage appeals to you in how it presents the various nuances and gray areas of religion and culture, then a lot of this book will appeal to you.
One final issue with the book I will note that may turn off some readers is that out of all the many incarnations, only two are in Native American bodies (and then, they are both Native Americans in North America. South America is completely left out for incarnations, although incarnations visit there). Similarly, there are no incarnations to Australia, New Zealand, Central America, or any island nation anywhere (Caribbean, Pacific Islands, United Kingdom, Iceland). There is only one incarnation where one of the souls is in an African, and that African is a slave on a Chinese slave ship who then goes to China (we thus spend very little time in Africa, just at the beginning on the slave ship). One character in an incarnation mentions that in the past she went to Africa but the reader does not see her time there. I definitely think that it’s a weakness that so many areas of the world are left out. For instance, I have zero idea what happened in Australia now that it clearly was never a penal colony of the UK (since the UK never existed). Similarly, it seems Africa would be very different with all the changes in global power, and yet the only passing mention we get of modern Africa in the later incarnations is that one of the characters visits there to fight against Female Genital Mutliation (FGM). If so much else changed, why not in Africa?
I know it may seem like I listed out a lot of issues, but it is a very long book that tackles a huge task. My review is almost as if I was reviewing an entire series in one fell swoop. Each individual part had issues, as did some of the overarching ideas, but I mostly really did enjoy reading it. It’s a fascinating thought experiment that wasn’t as well executed as it could have been, but parts of it were brilliant. I also enjoyed the feminist themes throughout. Men and women are both just souls, reincarnating into a woman is not a punishment. In fact, neither gender nor race is a punishment for previous incarnations, just species. Similarly, the more a society advances the more equal their genders and races are. There is a lot of thought given to what it means to be a woman in various areas of the world, which could easily have been passed over or not handled well.
Overall, this is a book that tackles a huge philosophical question in a fantastical way. It is a large task that probably would have been better suited to a series to fully flesh-out the world, the lives, and the nuances in both. Readers interested in spiritual questions with a tendency to view all religions as different paths to the same enlightenment and a curiosity about how the world might be different with different religions in the lead will be most suited to the book. Readers interested in a more thorough exploration of an alternate history will most likely be disappointed by the reincarnation aspect and the brief time spent in each time period and culture.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 763 pages – chunkster
Source: PaperBackSwap
Counts For:
Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge
and
Book Review: Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages by Dean Koontz
Summary:
Isaac Bodkins is a magical toymaker. He makes toys that actually come alive and seek out children who need them the most, such as children who have lost a parent or who are facing abuse. When he dies before he has a chance to tell his chosen heir about her purpose, evil has a chance to take over again. His toys, the Oddkins, must set out to tell her before evil manages to land its own new evil toymaker that would create living toys to torture children. Evil sends out his evil toys in an attempt to stop the Oddkins on their dangerous cross-town mission.
Review:
The person who loaned me this book told me it was marketed as a fable for all ages but really might be a bit too scary for the youngest among us. Person also knew that I love me some fables, not to mention talking animals or toys, so I was excited to get into this book. Alas, it wasn’t ultimately my style, but it is a well-written book I could see working for a lot of people.
The plot is a quest where each member of the questing group gets at least one chance to shine. Although I was fairly certain that good would ultimately triumph over evil, I still was left worried for the main characters periodically, and I also was unable to predict the details of the triumph. Since the toymaker lived in the countryside outside of the city, the quest consists of time in both the country and the city. This kept situations varied and engaging.
Since this is a fable and most of the characters are in fact magical toys, they are not what one would describe as three-dimensional. However, their two dimensions work for the story. For instance, the teddy bear leader of the good toys is brave and strong and true but he also has to work at being brave. He is not just naturally brave. Similarly, although the two potential inheritors of toymaking are good and evil, they both get background information given to them. The evil one was in prison and only takes pleasure from causing others pain. The good one ran a toy store and was recently widowed and looking for something more in her life.
So why didn’t I love it? Well, some things said were just too clearly religious for me. There’s a lot of talk of afterlife, and the evil toys are driven by who is clearly Satan. There are also times where the good toys stop and make statements to each other that are clearly the author preaching to the reader through them. For instance
God’s world is full of magic, isn’t it? Not just the secret kind of magic of which we’re a part, but the simple magic of everyday life-magic. (location 1358)
Given that this happens rather frequently and given that the evil is clearly represented to be Satan, I just found the whole book to be a bit too heavy-handed in the religion department for me. A reader who does follow Christianity might not be bothered, but even then, the preachiness within a book isn’t for everyone.
Overall this is a well-written fable that is engaging and unique. It is a bit heavy-handed in its presentation of various religious beliefs for this reader, but other readers who enjoy that in their literature will probably enjoy this book.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Book Review: Love Me by Danger Slater
Summary:
I am awesome. I am the fucking awesomest awesome dude that ever was. I live on a hilltop in my castle made from 300 human skulls. I sit on the roof and fight with Moon while wearing my Totally Authentic Viking Outfit I bought on ebay. My tears are cancerous. No really. See how the animals that drink them keel over and die? I surround my castle with a moat of blood and entrails where my crocoweilers live. (They’re crocodiles cross-bred with rottweilers). The thing is, I’m kind of lonely. So maybe I should go have some adventures around the world and do shit like invent Christianity? Yeah, that sounds like a plan.
Review:
This book is definitely intended for a narrow audience. But for that audience it is hilarious and awesome. You have to love swearing, gross-out humor, complete zaniness, and have an ability to overlook certain discrepancies like the fact that Christianity did not originate in America and if the whole world was at nuclear war why is there suddenly a fully functional president in the White House? I’m sure that all sounds crazy and bizarre because it is. But it’s also hilarious.
It’s incredibly hard to describe and articulate just way such a zany book is awesome to read, so I’ll let a couple of quotes speak for themselves.
Three days later Jesus used his magic/zombie/God powers to come back from the dead. All the Romans were like, “No fucking way!” And Jesus was all like, “Fucking way, bro!” (location 662)
My heart, once again, whimpers. It gets all emo and grows an unattractive beard and starts writing bad poetry. My heart is looking very Cat Stevens. (location 1964)
I bind my novel in the hide of the now extinct Caspian tiger just so the publishers will know, Whoa, this dude is serious, and I mail it out. (location 529)
But it’s not just all zany humor. Slater also demonstrates a clear understanding and knowledge of the rise of Western society and culture. Passages periodically toss out allusions to not just pop culture and religious history, but also to parts of the Western Canon, such as Greek Mythology:
I welcome the unctuous numbness into my body. It offers me relief. I let the Charon of alcohol ferry me across the River Styx. I let it guide me deeper into Hell. (location 2879)
Underneath the humor and the allusions though what the book really is is a parable for anyone who ever searched for the meaning of life and wound up agnostic or atheist. Parts of it truly speak to the experience of finding and losing religion. Of then investing yourself into other ideals that just don’t work out for you either until you’re left with the only solution, that life’s purpose is….
to exist in any way you see fit, plain and simple. (location 1391)
The one drawback to the novel is that this small indie press work needs an editor (or another editing swoop from Slater). Although his writing itself is very good, there are a few misspelled words, typos, etc…. that, alas, interfere with the book’s good qualities. Please listen to this reviewer and either do it yourself or find a friend to! Your work is too good for such an easily fixed short-coming.
Overall this book is a delicious, zany, humorous parable of the agnostic/atheist journey through Western society in a search for the meaning of life. If that sounds like it’d appeal to you and swearing and dick jokes don’t offend you, then I highly recommend it.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz (Series, #1)
Summary:
The students at Duchesne Academy in New York City appear to be your typical bunch of wealthy, elite teenagers. Naturally gorgeous twins Mimi and Jack rule the school. Bliss became part of Mimi’s entourage when her oil wealthy Texas family moved to NYC. Schuyler is part of the crowd of misfits who wear goth clothes instead of the more typical Louis Vuitton. They all gradually discover, however, that the secret to their families’ wealth isn’t just that they came over on the Mayflower. They are Blue Bloods–vampires who retire from their human shells every 100 years or so then come back with the same blood. Their teenage years are vulnerable ones, and someone or something out there is managing to kill some of the young Blue Bloods.
Review:
The vampire lore behind this story is not my style. It is so much not my style that just writing the above summary made me cringe. None of the official summaries of the book reveal much about the vampire lore, so let me tell you just in case it’s not your style either. Blue Bloods is heavily steeped in Christianity. The vampires are fallen angels who are attempting to atone for their rebellion. They face hundreds of years of punishment trapped in human bodies that they must eventually retire then return in new ones. The vampires accomplish this reincarnation by taking some of the blood from the dead vampire and implanting it into a vampire woman’s uterus. It all rings as a bit odd when you have a teenage character who’s never done anything more wrong than sneak into a club be told that she must atone for this rebellion against god that she doesn’t even remember doing hundreds of years ago. It really takes the bite out of vampires and makes them kind of pathetic.
Where the book is strongest is oddly where the vampire thing is on the back burner. Schuyler and Bliss get to model for a jean company, and that scene was actually quite enjoyable to read. If this had been your more typical murder mystery at an elite high school, I think it would have been a much better book.
Some reviewers had a problem with the presence of teenage drinking, drugging, and sex. I actually thought the sex was handled quite well, with teens talking about it a lot but nobody actually managing to do it. That read as very real. The alcohol is kind of a non-factor, since vampires can’t be affected by alcohol. My only confusion with this is if that’s the case, then why are they risking breaking the law to drink? I suppose it seems minor compared to convincing a human to become your familiar so you can feed off them. The drugs are entirely presented in a negative light the few times they are briefly mentioned.
What shocked me, and I can’t believe how infrequently this is mentioned, is that there is incest and the vampires accept it. Gah! There are times when incest is present in a book, and it is handled so that all sides of the issue may be seen–all of the accompanying emotions are delicately handled. Here, the vampires just say that it’s the way it should be and are protective of the siblings. Not much else is said of it, beyond a few teen vampires being grossed out, but it is made clear that their reactions are considered inappropriate by the vampires.
That said, it’s not badly written on a sentence level. It reads naturally, which is probably the only reason I struggled through the cringe-inducing lore. It is essentially Gossip Girl crossed with Vampire Diaries with some incest and Christianity tossed in. If that’s your thing, you will enjoy it. All others should probably pass though.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
5 Year Old Me and a Bag of Kitten Food (Virtual Advent Tour 2009)
I decided to participate in the Virtual Advent Tour in which bloggers sign up for a day of the advent calendar to feature a holiday-centric post. So, happy 23rd day everyone and welcome! On to the post.
I grew up in rural Vermont with a brother 5 years older than me and my two working class, highly religious parents. Since my parents were very serious about their Christianity, to the point that I was homeschooled until the 6th grade, Christmas was a big freaking deal. Jesus being born was the fulfillment of many prophecies. Without Jesus’s birth, there’d be no Easter and without Easter we’d have no hope at all. Jesus’s birth was second only to Jesus’s death and resurrection, and that was only first because the Second Coming hadn’t happened yet. Therefore, Christmas was one busy season for us. I’m talking Advent Calendars, baking multiple goodies from scratch, multiple must watch specials and movies, two extended family gatherings, candlelight services, special church performances, and more. Of course, me being a kid, the only truly important part of Christmas was the presents Christmas morning. Although, you’d be hard-pressed to get me to admit it, and I would fervently state how much I enjoyed the family reading of the Christmas story from Luke between stockings and presents.
Since my parents fervently believed telling us that Santa was real was akin to telling us Muhammed was right, presents were gradually placed under the Christmas tree, and we weren’t allowed to touch them. This led to hours of me sitting on the rug in front of the tree pining and wondering erm, *ahem* reading a book. My brother and I became experts at determining what a present was just by its shape or determining what awesome present the unwrapped accessories under the tree went to.
Every year pretty much from the time I could talk, I asked for a kitty. We had a dog, Beuaregard, but all I wanted was a kitty to snuggle and to feel purring on my feet when I slept. Dolls shmolls, I wanted a kitty. One December morning, when I was (I believe 5, definitely before I was 7) I came into the living room and came to a dead stand-still. All you needed was to turn me to salt, and I’d be doing the perfect impression of Lot’s wife. There under the Christmas tree was a bag of kitten food. My heart raced and I did my best not to shreek in sheer joy, because a family rule of Christmas was if we guessed a present prior to Christmas morning, we weren’t allowed to have it. It was the veritable don’t ask, don’t tell of holidays. My mom wasn’t big into giving us what we wanted, she thought it’d be spoiling us, but my dad. My dad always wanted to give us exactly what we wanted, and I was certain this bag of kitten food was his way of telling me that I’d have my kitty in a few short weeks.
Christmas morning came, and I impatiently went through the stockings and the reading of the Christmas story. Present opening started, which was always a slow ordeal as we opened them one at a time while everyone watched. My first present was not a kitty. Ok. So they were waiting to give it to me last knowing what a ruckus it’d cause. I could wait. Gradually all the presents were gone from under the tree. Only the never-wrapped chocolate covered cherries and kitten food were left.
“Isn’t there something more?” I asked, as my parents got up to get some coffee. My mom’s mouth opened to go into her ungrateful speech, but my dad cut her off asking, “Why do you think there’s something more?”
I pointed at the kitten food, “Well, there’s that bag of food there.”
“Oh, that’s a treat for the dog. He loves cat food.”
No. My dad had to be kidding. He was a big teaser. “What?”
“The dog loves cat food.” At this point, my mom started tapping my dad on the arm, and recognition dawned on the two of them as I started to wail, “You mean I’m not getting a kitten?!”
According to family lore, I was inconsolable the entire day and crying a good portion of it.
Merry Christmas, everyone! May your day be filled with kitten-like presents.
Book Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall By Anne Bronte
Summary:
Cited as the feminist antithesis to her contemporary Austen’s romantic 19th century ramblings, Anne Bronte’s best-known novel presents the much more dire image of the very real risk of marriage in a time where the wife loses all her human rights to her husband. Gilbert Markham becomes infatuated with the widow Helen Graham who has moved into his neighborhood with her son, but rumors soon start to spark up around her. When he confronts her about her conduct, she shows him her diary. There he learns her travails and sufferings at the hands of her still very much alive husband.
Review:
I came to this book with high expectations. I heard of it simply as the one of the earlier feminist novels written in response to such works as Austen’s. I felt this opened the door to many possibilities, but perhaps I was thinking about this with too much of a 21st century brain. What held The Tenant of Wildfell Hall back was the relentless presentation of Helen as the picture of Christian piety. Given the fact that Helen behaves quite willfully and controversially for the time period by leaving her husband’s home to live separately from him, this was probably quite necessary for Bronte’s contemporaries to find Helen a sympathetic character. For me though her severeness sometimes had me siding with her tyrant of a husband in my mind. He calls her cold and calculating. Well all she ever talks about is living piously now to be joyous in heaven after death. I would find that cold and calculating as well.
This book does hold value for the modern feminist though if we re-position ourselves to look at it through the lens of how society at the time has messed up both Helen and her husband, Arthur. Society tells Helen that it is her job as a woman to be the pious one. Although single men may go cavorting about she must sit respectably at home or go out to supervised dances. Men may behave however they desire as long as they settle down after marriage. This belief leads Helen to make her foolish, egotistical mistake of thinking that marrying Arthur is alright for she can change him after they are married. To a certain extent Arthur makes the same mistake. He has been told the ideal wife is a highly pious one, so he marries Helen thinking she will save him when, in fact, they are the most mis-matched couple ever.
Arthur enjoys cavorting, playing cards, and drinking. Helen refuses to do these things out of piety and nags Arthur not to do them. They both come to realize they are mis-matched, but in their society divorce is a painful embarrassment to both parties. Helen doesn’t even consider it for Christian reasons; Arthur in order to save face. This leads to their gradual loss of caring for each other, although Arthur’s comes much faster and more brutally when he carries out an affair with the wife of a visiting friend.
Arthur no longer wants Helen, but she is his wife and he would be a laughing-stock if he couldn’t control her, so he starts abusing her emotionally–repeatedly telling her it disgusts him to see her pale skin, for instance. He also carries out the afore-mentioned affairs with her full knowledge and at first forbids her from having any of her own. I am not condoning Arthur’s ill-treatment of Helen. He made the situation far more worse than society alone would have had them make it. He could, for instance, have allowed them to set up separate households, which was sometimes done. He at least could have shown her the respect she deserved as a human being, but instead he came to view her almost as a hated prison guard. This would not have been the case if they could have parted ways amicably.
I must admit what struck me far more than the restrictive society was Helen’s restrictive religion. She almost constantly lives only thinking of her reward after death in Heaven. She possesses nearly no joy for her beliefs require that she squander her life away serving a man who hates her. The only reason she even leaves him for a time, relieving some of her pain, is because she believes her duty to raise a pious son outweighs her duty as a wife, so she is justified to remove her son from the soul-risking influence of his father. Helen’s faith seems to bring her no joy, but instead demand she behave as a judging marble statue.
Although The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is not an obvious feminist manifesto, it as an excellent rendition of the oppression of 19th century society on both men and women. Reading of their struggles and realizing as a 21st century observer that there is essentially no way out for either of them beautifully demonstrates how far we’ve come. Bronte’s writing style is complex enough that what could be a bit of a boring, straight-forward tale remains interesting throughout. She changes perspectives a few times via diaries and letters. She does suffer from the 19th century literature trap of overly extensive descriptions of settings, but these are easily skimmed. An excellent example of 19th century literature, I wish Bronte’s realistic work was assigned more often in literature classes than Austen’s fluffy, unrealistic drivel.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Library
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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