Night

Elie Wiesel. Night. Hill & Wang, 1960.

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

Wiesel’s slim autobiographical novel tells the story of the fate of the Jews in the small village of Sighet, Transylvania. Late in the war, the Nazis arrive in his village and begin the process of systematically restricting the movements of the Jewish citizens, moving them into ghettos and then deporting them to the concentration camps. Wiesel describes his community as living in denial, choosing not to believe the horrific stories that have come to them over the years of Nazi rule and the war in Europe. Even as the German soldiers move into their village, the Jews of Sighet hang on to their belief that these stories cannot be true. Eli is a devout child who studies the holy texts. His faith and connection to his religion and culture are strong. In Wiesel’s novel of deportation, imprisonment, and release, he also documents his loss of faith and his disaffection from God. But, even so, just as he cannot let go of his will to live, he never entirely loses his connection to God. Eli is ashamed when he feels the burden of his dying father, but even this guilt attests to the remnants of human feeling inside of him—surviving the everyday body and soul crushing horror of existence in Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

A recent essay in the New York Times by Rachel Donadio notes the novel’s recent 80 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s recent promotion. Donadio provides a publishing history of Night. Wiesel originally wrote it in Yiddish and translated it into French before making it available to an American market in English. Wiesel’s is among the earliest of published memoirs of the Holocaust, and most publishers felt that their audiences were not looking for this kind of book. 15 publishers rejected his book before Hill & Wang took it on. Donadio writes that Wiesel received the criticism of not being Jewish enough—“universalizing” and “Christianizing” the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust. It is hard to imagine that Wiesel sought to sanitize his experience or to produce something that would meet the approval of a mass audience for personal gain. His book sold modestly at first, and, as Holocaust studies became more common in schools and on campuses, teachers and professors adopted it for classroom reading.

A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win

Shelby Steele. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win
New York: Free Press, 2008.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Shelby Steele, of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has distinguished himself in a manner that should make thoughtful readers cringe. His slender tome Bound Man with its ebullient self-loathing argument is already – is this still February? – dead on arrival.

Steele asserts that black people have two options in dealing with white folks. They can put on the mask of a “bargainer” or that of a “challenger.” The latter intimidates while the former cajoles and allows whites the promise of redemption with “racial innocence” serving as the means of indulging their collective guilt. Once a bargainer has attained elite status, offering whites reciprocity as part of the deal, they then ascend to the level of “iconic Negro” e.g. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan et al.

Steele opines that Barack Obama is a pioneer because he is the first iconic Negro to bargain his way to the national political stage. But alas, Obama in his accomodationist role vis-à-vis white America threatens black identity. Following in the wake of last autumn’s canard that Obama (like other iconic Negroes) is not “black enough” Steele holds that “Consequently, it is his odd fate to threaten the identity of the group from which he needs almost unanimous support to be politically viable.” (p. 123) Viewing the exit polling of the recent Democratic primaries the question for Shelby Steele might be: is a ratio of 8 to 1 “almost unanimous” enough?

Another question or two comes to mind after choking down Bound Man. Would an antacid offer any relief and which mask exactly was Dr. King wearing?

This book is available at Stewart Library, Grinnell's public library.

The Complete Peanuts

Shultz, Charles. The Complete Peanuts. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, c2004-

Reviewed by Sarah Marcum

Last semester I read through the first eight volumes of Charles M. Schulz' "Complete Peanuts" collection, published by Fantagraphics. Two years worth of the strip, both dailies and Sundays, are bound together in each volume. The books are small and pleasant to hold (which often is not the case for comprehensive anthologies).

I am looking forward to the publication of the remaining 17 volumes.

3rd floor PN6728.P4 S2454x 2004

The Sleeping Buddha

Ghafour, Hamida. The Sleeping Buddha: The Story of Afghanistan through the Eyes of One Family. Toronto: McArthur & Company, 2007.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Hamida Ghafour was born in Kabul, Afghanistan but moved to Canada with her family when she was four. She returns to Afghanistan not long after the U.S. invasion following 9/11 to learn about the country of her ancestors and to assess Afghanistan's current conditions. A journalist, she works with local people and the military to spend time in Kabul, Kunar, Bamiyan, and other important areas to her family and to her national heritage. Ghafour reviews
Afghan's history, both its progress and its failures; the disastrous effects of centuries of foreign invasion; and the mistakes of the current U.S. "hearts and mind" campaign. Ghafour discusses ethnic tensions, the plight of women, the tragedy of the large number of Afghan refugees within and outside of the country, and Islamic extremism versus Islam as it was traditionally practiced in Afghanistan.

This narrative while personal, is written with the perspective of a professional journalist. Ghafour is connecting with her homeland for the first time. Her parents were products of the more liberal and progressive 70s and were raised in Kabul, a place very different from Afghan's remote rural and mountainous villages. Ghafour provides both the broad historical perspective, but also offers personal stories including those of Debbie, a westerner, who runs a salon and trains women to become cosmetoligists and to open their own salons, the Khadr family who are Taliban supporters living in Canada, Dr. Tarzi, an archaeologist who hopes to locate and excavate the Sleeping Buddha, and Shahida, a cousin of Ghafour, who is one of 18 female candidates for the Wolesi Jirga or "the House of the People."

Not yet published in the United States, this books has been ordered for the libraries.

We Disappear in Flight

Soltanzadeh, Mohammad-Asef. "We Disappear in Flight," in Another Sea, Another Shore: Persian Stories of Migration. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2004

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

Soltanzadeh was born in Afghanistan and moved to Iran in 1986. The protagonist in his story is an Afghan immigrant living with his brother in Tehran when he learns from his uncle that his mother has died in a bomb blast in Afghanistan. Devastated, he now lives in fear of hearing bad news from home. His brother decides to return to Afghanistan, but the main character remains in Iran. He begins to lose his thin grasp on reality as he receives another visit from his uncle.

Soltanzadeh, who has been awarded Iran's Golshiri Literary Award, moved to Denmark in 2002 after Iran deported all Afghanistani immigrants. From what I have been able to find, this is his only work translated into English.

3rd Floor PK 6449.E7 A56 2004