Nik Kroushl
A really comprehensive history of migration and US policy on immigration spanning the 70s to 2023. While I vaguely knew that US interventionist policy in Central America contributed to the migration crisis, I had no idea of the details or scale. It was sometimes hard for me to keep straight the developments and policy in the US side of things, but largely because US administrations kept backtrackingand reinstating and changing processes, making it impossible to follow. This book has both a policy element and a very human element.
This is less a "solutions" book and more of a "wow, we fucked up SO big in so many ways" book. Infuriating. Difficult to read. And really well done.
A short modern fable. Lots of woo woo about manifesting your true destiny. Peddles in individualism. I just never believed the premise that "when you're pursuing your Personal Legend, the whole world conspires to help you," or that when we don't pursue the dreams of our youth our lives become worthless and out of sync with the universe. Overuse of the phrase "Personal Legend," disappointing relegation of the one female character to the role of personality-free love interest... wasn't for me.
Contains spoilers
This is a dreamy book, in many ways feels like being dragged into a riptide of beautiful and dense and continuous prose. The perspective tumbles around, between the minds of protagonist Laura Diaz and her family members and lovers, often a narrative that hunts down a truth not consciously known to our narrator but which even so underlies each event. A conversation between Laura and one of her lovers seamlessly cascades into a wordless exchange of secret thoughts, which in their specificity also reveal broad truths about the human experience.
I'm still trying to wrestle with all this book "means". There's so much packed into this lifetime epic that traces the major political events of 20th century Mexico as much as it does the life of Laura Diaz. (It was a very fun way to learn about some of the history, especially the Frida y Diego cameos, but I wish I'd solidified more historical knowledge before I read it.) I resonated with Laura's internal conflicts as she tries to figure out her place in post-revolution Mexico, to figure out what meaning her life can have both in personal relationships and in broader political endeavors, especially as a privileged woman who is also constantly navigating the waters of grief. Laura consistently loses herself in trying to understand and care for others, until she finally discovers the meaning-making and contributory artistic calling that pulls the fragments of her life and experiences together.
The writing is beautiful and often confusing. The symbolism is ripe and lyrical. There are aphorisms that succinctly, cuttingly lay bare the burdens of life in a dark world, the meanings or lack thereof of individual lives. There is the seemingly evergreen conundrum of young revolutionaries (or people who want to change the world, who fight hard and lose a lot for what they believe) who find their ideals and dreams trodden into the ground as time goes on, the struggle of idealism that either dies young or lives long enough to become a villain. There's the long confusion of family members who don't understand one another or who understand one another too well, and to their detriment. The characters are stunningly wrought if not always easy to understand or to like; they're larger than life in their arguments, their martyrdom, their ideals.
There are pieces I found frustrating: I don't think this book passes the Bechdel test (which is not an end-all, but indicates the focus of the book on the men in Laura's life). Her relationship with Harry felt like it could have been cut from the book -- the dynamics bothered me and I think the points made in this piece of the plot could have been made elsewhere. Fuentes seems to have a fascination with Jews and the Holocaust that feels... weird, including the martyrdom of Raquel Mendes. At times the poetry of the writing undermines the point.
But I think there's much more here for me to mine, and I'll hopefully be returning to re-read this book.
What I expected: Stories of various attempts at utopian communities over the past several centuries, reportage on current utopian and communal living projects.
What I got: Chapters organized by ways that we organize society (homes/housing, childrearing, education, parenting and the nuclear family), a crash course in 20th century socialist and communist theory, examples in fiction ranging from Plato’s *Republic* to Ursula K LeGuin, examples in real-life ranging from monastic religious societies to modern-day eco-villages, a *Star Trek* themed call to radical hope, an impetus to work toward systemic change *and* individual life choice that upset the capitalist status quo fomented on inequality and exhaustion…
It makes me want to start a book club.
Darker than the first book, and at times felt like it juggled too many perspectives and got a little repetitive (I get it, Wang Baoxiang has a soul full of blackness!), with sexual dynamics that were both fascinating and sometimes disturbing, but even so I had so much fun and was so compelled. These books read like really good fanfiction, in the best way, e.g. they are deeply enmeshed in the psychology of characters whose similarities and differences make up a rich story tapestry, in addition to the actual plot.
I know this is a story about coming of age, breaking away from home, yearning for adventure and the surreal and romance. The heroine's stream of conscious narration is beautiful, wrapped up in rich and incongruous descriptions of sights and sounds that make the backdrop of Mexico City and the Oaxacan coast both familiar and strange, eye popping and ordinary. It's the kind of book where more goes on in the internality of the characters than in the actual plot. Luisa is fascinated by shipwrecks and doomed quests, and finds herself on one as well. I think it was hard for me to connect with her because it was hard to determine what she really wanted – which is maybe the point, because Luisa doesn't quite know what she wants either.
Maybe a little too “literary” for me – but beautifully rendered scenes.
I was expecting a fairly straightforward treatise on travel, its complexities, the privilege inherent for white Westerners in contrast with people of color and people of the Third World*. Maybe because so much of the nonfiction I've read lately has been so clear-cut and written primarily from the researcher's and self-help guru's point of view, a vantage point of instruction and enhancement. I didn't realize until I picked up this book how much I missed memoir, mysticism, stumbling around alongside an essayist.
Habib combines fascinating passages on the history of elements of travel from passports to highways, as well as personal stories and beautiful travel writing of places she has been and conversations she's had with "locals" (an ever-shifting identity) and tourists alike. She interrogates so much of the hallmarks of modern (and earlier...) tourism: suspicious of the idea that travel itself enlarges us, cognizant of the way that tourism economies transform cities and towns especially in the Third World, doubtful that a distinction can ever be made between a traveler and a tourist, recognizing that the expansion of leisure travel is both a matter of cross-class access and one of ecological devastation. Despite being markedly more well-traveled than I am and less steeped in the white Western world, Habib asks many of the questions I do and is enmeshed in the complicated politics of travel. There are also explorations of other kinds of travel: news and reading as the originator of cosmopolitanism, the city bus as a method of flaneuring and wanderlust, the sweet reciprocity of a pair of vagrant music students cooking French food.
It was just such a compelling book to read, from the perspective of a history buff, a lover of lyrical language and braided essay, a would-be traveler, a daughter or mother or spouse, or just a person mildly self-aware of their own hypocrisy. I want to read it again immediately.
*Habib explicitly used the term Third World and explains why she chooses to in an epilogue
I really wanted this to be a framework or guide post for setting out what you want in a “good enough job”, a work of philosophy maybe. (I read it because Oliver Burkeman recommended it and I really liked Four Thousand Weeks.) But it was more a work of journalism examining some different aspects of our relationship to work through the stories of individual workers, with a few broader statistics thrown in. It was fine for what it was but very little of the book contained new ideas for me and the authors conclusion is kind of just “a lot of our problems with work are institutional and societal, but you probably should just find your own middle ground between caring about your job and building a life outside it”.
The idea was interesting but the execution left much to be desired here – so much of the writing really too dense, charmed by itself, and nestled in niche theory to be accessible, at times feeling condescending. I found the histories of family abolition movements more interesting than the other chapters. I find when I seek out books like these I'm looking for a practical handbook for today (or tomorrow) not a theoretical dream for a post capitalist future.
At times nausea inducing, always fascinating, either the characters writ large on the page. Gaps where I wanted to know more in some places (like, I wanted to know how Westover dealt with moving in with her partner and overcoming the “living in sin” thoughts) and cyclical in others (many of the stories with Shawn were essentially playing out over and over, although I understand this to be a reflection of the realities of abuse).
Weird and mystical, a fictional exploration of La Malinche. This book gave me so many fascinating views of history and life during the brutal Spanish invasion of Mexico (fictionalized and with liberties taken of course) and at the organization of Mexica and Maya groups at the time. It was easy to get lost (in both positive and negative ways) in some of the meandering prose, expositions of cosmology, and deep symbolism; it was also a very “internal” book based in protagonist Malinalli's thoughts and dreams rather than in scene.